Latest news with #Episcopal
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NC House bills will undercut services to homeless vets
People experiencing homelessness in Raleigh pack to leave an encampment off of Highway 70 near Interstate 40. (Photo: Greg Childress) As a U.S. Navy veteran, I am honored to manage a team that serves other veterans who find themselves without a home in North Carolina. In my role as director of outreach for Veterans Services of The Carolinas (VSC), our team collaborates daily with the faith-based community, mental health and substance use providers, LME/MCOs, law enforcement, housing providers, and others across all 100 counties of North Carolina. That experience has provided us with deep insight into what works and what doesn't. Two pending bills in the North Carolina General Assembly will have a direct impact on our communities, service providers, law enforcement, and those we serve. Both are promoted—as they were in other targeted states —by an interest group out of Austin, Texas, called Cicero Action. Joe Lonsdale, its founder, is a venture capitalist with ties to those in private prison contracting, including technology for the newer field of e-carceration. One bill – House Bill 437 – would criminalize nonprofits like ours by threatening felony charges if drug activity occurs within 100 feet of our facilities — an extreme and unworkable standard that punishes service providers for circumstances beyond their control. The other — House Bill 781 — establishes new requirements on cities and counties to set up state-sanctioned homeless encampments for up to a year without additional funding. Going after nonprofits and supporting unfunded mandates is not on-brand for the state of North Carolina, but neither is disrespecting our faith-based and veteran leaders who the Cicero lobbyists characterize as unserious activists. Representatives for four bishops overseeing 1200 North Carolina Episcopal and United Methodist churches joined VSC and other veterans in sharing concerns about these bills and the impacts they will have at multiple House committee podiums. And yet, the bill passed out of the House and now awaits a round of committee hearings in the Senate. Under the guise of a self-described think tank, the Cicero Institute—in the absence of data—blames the Housing First model for the increase of homelessness. From Texas, it declares there is no lack of affordable housing in North Carolina and glosses over how two out of three of its residents experiencing homelessness in recent years are experiencing it for the first time. Prioritizing housing with wrap-around services—the housing first model—has been the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs approach since 2012. More than 133,000 veterans were housed and provided with supportive services to help them retain housing over the last three years. The practice was first introduced by the George W. Bush Administration and has enjoyed subsequent bipartisan support because of data showing its effectiveness. The average number of returns to homelessness across the state utilizing Housing First is less than 13%. The City of Raleigh estimates it costs $96,000 a year in emergency services, law enforcement and health care for a homeless person living outside. As Raleigh's News & Observer reported recently, putting someone in a home and making services available costs $20,000 — saving taxpayers' $76,000 per person. In contrast, another local government projected the cost of installing just one Greenflow unit to provide the bill's requirement of running water and restrooms at up to $200,000 alone. Will local governments have to add this cost and others in their capital improvement or their regular budgets to meet the state's approval? Will property tax increases be required to move the state-sanctioned encampments around each year? Additionally, legal counsels from local governments have raised concerns about increased liability and incarceration along with decreased local control–as reported by their colleagues in states where the Cicero bills have passed into law. Cicero offers no data to indicate its proposal will do anything to end homelessness—just make it less visible. A month after the Florida encampment law went into effect last year, the first lawsuit was filed, resulting in a hasty sweep of an encampment without a plan for where people would go. Ongoing treatment for substance use and medications for mental illness are interrupted or lost when caseworkers and peer support specialists cannot find those they serve. State-sanctioned, compulsive homeless encampments will drive unsheltered veterans further from the resources needed and further away from sustainable recovery, while putting the onus on our local law enforcement. Especially in the context of yesterday's annual observance of Memorial Day, it makes no sense for our leaders to pass laws that criminalize those who have given up so much for the freedoms we enjoy. Our General Assembly members would serve their communities more effectively by investing in solutions that have been proven to work and are cost effective.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NC House bills will undercut services to homeless vets
People experiencing homelessness in Raleigh pack to leave an encampment off of Highway 70 near Interstate 40. (Photo: Greg Childress) As a U.S. Navy veteran, I am honored to manage a team that serves other veterans who find themselves without a home in North Carolina. In my role as director of outreach for Veterans Services of The Carolinas (VSC), our team collaborates daily with the faith-based community, mental health and substance use providers, LME/MCOs, law enforcement, housing providers, and others across all 100 counties of North Carolina. That experience has provided us with deep insight into what works and what doesn't. Two pending bills in the North Carolina General Assembly will have a direct impact on our communities, service providers, law enforcement, and those we serve. Both are promoted—as they were in other targeted states —by an interest group out of Austin, Texas, called Cicero Action. Joe Lonsdale, its founder, is a venture capitalist with ties to those in private prison contracting, including technology for the newer field of e-carceration. One bill – House Bill 437 – would criminalize nonprofits like ours by threatening felony charges if drug activity occurs within 100 feet of our facilities — an extreme and unworkable standard that punishes service providers for circumstances beyond their control. The other — House Bill 781 — establishes new requirements on cities and counties to set up state-sanctioned homeless encampments for up to a year without additional funding. Going after nonprofits and supporting unfunded mandates is not on-brand for the state of North Carolina, but neither is disrespecting our faith-based and veteran leaders who the Cicero lobbyists characterize as unserious activists. Representatives for four bishops overseeing 1200 North Carolina Episcopal and United Methodist churches joined VSC and other veterans in sharing concerns about these bills and the impacts they will have at multiple House committee podiums. And yet, the bill passed out of the House and now awaits a round of committee hearings in the Senate. Under the guise of a self-described think tank, the Cicero Institute—in the absence of data—blames the Housing First model for the increase of homelessness. From Texas, it declares there is no lack of affordable housing in North Carolina and glosses over how two out of three of its residents experiencing homelessness in recent years are experiencing it for the first time. Prioritizing housing with wrap-around services—the housing first model—has been the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs approach since 2012. More than 133,000 veterans were housed and provided with supportive services to help them retain housing over the last three years. The practice was first introduced by the George W. Bush Administration and has enjoyed subsequent bipartisan support because of data showing its effectiveness. The average number of returns to homelessness across the state utilizing Housing First is less than 13%. The City of Raleigh estimates it costs $96,000 a year in emergency services, law enforcement and health care for a homeless person living outside. As Raleigh's News & Observer reported recently, putting someone in a home and making services available costs $20,000 — saving taxpayers' $76,000 per person. In contrast, another local government projected the cost of installing just one Greenflow unit to provide the bill's requirement of running water and restrooms at up to $200,000 alone. Will local governments have to add this cost and others in their capital improvement or their regular budgets to meet the state's approval? Will property tax increases be required to move the state-sanctioned encampments around each year? Additionally, legal counsels from local governments have raised concerns about increased liability and incarceration along with decreased local control–as reported by their colleagues in states where the Cicero bills have passed into law. Cicero offers no data to indicate its proposal will do anything to end homelessness—just make it less visible. A month after the Florida encampment law went into effect last year, the first lawsuit was filed, resulting in a hasty sweep of an encampment without a plan for where people would go. Ongoing treatment for substance use and medications for mental illness are interrupted or lost when caseworkers and peer support specialists cannot find those they serve. State-sanctioned, compulsive homeless encampments will drive unsheltered veterans further from the resources needed and further away from sustainable recovery, while putting the onus on our local law enforcement. Especially in the context of yesterday's annual observance of Memorial Day, it makes no sense for our leaders to pass laws that criminalize those who have given up so much for the freedoms we enjoy. Our General Assembly members would serve their communities more effectively by investing in solutions that have been proven to work and are cost effective.
Boston Globe
5 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Eastern Nazarene College part of nationwide wave of rural, religious colleges experiencing closures, mergers
Then it took an unexpected turn. 'Lord, hear our prayer for St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy University,' the young voice said, 'that the grace of the Holy Spirit may help us to follow God's plan for our new partnership.' The speaker was talking about ongoing efforts to unite St. Ambrose University, where this weeknight Mass was being held, with fellow Catholic university Mount Mercy. Small religious schools in rural states are shutting down at an accelerating rate, a fate these two are attempting to avoid. Advertisement 'Lord, hear our prayer,' responded the congregation of students in St. Ambrose-branded T-shirts and hoodies. The heads of both St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy, which is in Cedar Rapids, said they've watched as nearby religiously affiliated colleges, athletic rivals and institutions that employed their friends and former colleagues closed. With falling numbers of applicants to college — especially in the Midwest — 'we just don't have the demographics anymore,' said St. Ambrose President Amy Novak. Now, as For many other small religiously affiliated institutions, time has already run out. More than half of the 79 nonprofit colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2020, or announced that they will close or merge, were religiously affiliated, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of news coverage and Advertisement Some small, religiously affiliated institutions that are not on these lists are also showing signs of strain. Saint Augustine's University in North Carolina, which is Episcopal, has 200 students, down from 1,100 two years ago, and has Bluffton University in Ohio, which is Mennonite, is looking for new partners after a planned merger Other religiously affiliated schools are also taking steps to buttress themselves against demographic and financial challenges. Ursuline College in Ohio, for instance, which has fewer than 1,000 students, Advertisement More than a fifth of colleges and universities in the United States, or 849 out of 3,893, The threats to them are getting new attention. Presidents of 20 Catholic universities and colleges met in November in Chicago at a conference sponsored by DePaul University and held at the offices of the Deloitte consulting firm, which collected data to help them figure out solutions to the challenges they face. 'The intent was to think about a blueprint for the future of Catholic higher education,' including more partnerships, shared services and other kinds of alliances, said Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. 'Survival of the fittest is not the strategy that will advance the common good of Catholic higher education. We have to work together.' The American Council on Education last year launched a Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities, with leaders of what has since grown to 17 institutions including Pepperdine, Brigham Young and Yeshiva universities and the University of Notre Dame. The idea of the commission, which is scheduled to meet in Washington in June, is 'to increase visibility for the important contributions of religious and faith-based colleges and universities and to foster collaboration' among them. Advertisement Some religious colleges and universities are doing fine, and even posting enrollment gains — at least in part because of growing political divisions, campus protests and ideological attacks on secular institutions, said David Hoag, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Parents are 'wanting to put their son or daughter at a safe place that's going to have a biblical worldview or a way to look at challenges that's not polarized,' Hoag said. 'At our institutions, you're not going to be seeing protests or things that are happening at many of these [other] universities and colleges. You're going to see them rallying together, whether it's for a sporting event or for a revival or baptisms.' Other trends also offer some hope to religiously affiliated colleges and universities. A long decline in the proportion of adults who consider themselves affiliated with a religion Even religiously affiliated institutions confronting the realities of falling enrollment and financial woes fill a critically important role, their advocates say. They often serve low-income students who are the first in their families to go to college and are reluctant to enroll at large public universities. Many are in rural areas where access to higher education is more limited than in urban and suburban places and is becoming less available still as public universities in rural states have Advertisement Attending a small rural, religiously affiliated institution 'is, I think — especially for rural students — a great opportunity,' said Todd Olson, president of Mount Mercy, above the sound of trains crossing Cedar Rapids outside his window. 'I know kids from very small towns around Iowa,' like the one where he grew up, Olson said. 'This campus is a much more comfortable place for them.' When Jacob Lange arrived at St. Ambrose from East Dubuque, Illinois, and attended a Mass on campus, 'all of a sudden all these new people I had never met were kind of chatting with me and it was really kind of nice. It felt like I was kind of included and I didn't really think I would be originally,' he said. 'You figure, 'I'm probably going to sit in the back and probably not talk to anyone all night,' and then I showed up, and I walked out here and all of a sudden they're, like, 'Here, come join our group.' ' His parents also liked that he decided to go to a Catholic university, Lange said. 'You know, you go to one of these big schools with 25,000 kids, and you're kind of worried about your kid — like, what kind of dumb things is he going to get up to?' Catholic universities in particular have a slightly higher four-year graduation rate than the national average, according to the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary's University in Texas. Graduates have a stronger sense of community purpose, the center found in a survey. Alumni are 9 percentage points more likely to say they participate in civic activities. Advertisement More students at religiously affiliated than at secular institutions receive financial aid, the American Council on Education says. Three out of five get scholarships from the colleges themselves, compared to fewer than one in four at other kinds of schools. At both But these benefits for students can be vulnerabilities for budgets, said Novak, at St. Ambrose. 'We serve the poor. We educate the poor,' she said. 'That is a risky financial proposition at the moment for small, regional institutions that are largely tuition-driven.' The threats to smaller religiously affiliated institutions in rural areas stem largely from the downturn in the already short supply of high school graduates choosing to enroll. The proportion of such students going straight to college has fallen While they're generous with their financial aid, religiously affiliated colleges are also generally more expensive than many other higher education institutions, at a time when many families are questioning the return on their investments in tuition. Median tuition and fees average $25,416 a year, according to the American Council on Education. St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy, about 90 minutes away, Reaction among students and alumni has been mixed. Combining with St. Ambrose 'was kind of nerve-racking at the beginning because it's, like, 'Oh, this is a lot of change,' ' said Alaina Bina, a junior nursing major at Mount Mercy. She picked the university in the first place because she liked the small, hilly campus. 'I came from a small town, so I didn't really want to go bigger,' she said. 'Even when I came here on a tour, people would say 'Hi' to each other. You just know everyone, and that's kind of how it is in a small town, too.' Students were worried about what name would appear on their degrees (the degrees will still say 'Mount Mercy') and whether sports teams that once competed against each other would be merged. Novak and Olson promised to keep their athletics programs separate and even add a sport at Mount Mercy: football, beginning in 2026. Combining sports teams 'would not be wise at all from a business perspective,' Olson said the two agreed, because they are 'a powerful enrollment driver' for both schools. 'Honestly, this was probably the biggest student concern,' said Nasharia Patterson, student government president at Mount Mercy, who was wearing a brace on her wrist from an awkward back tuck basket catch during cheer practice. Keeping the athletics teams 'gives us a piece of Mount Mercy specifically to just hold on to.' Among alumni, meanwhile, 'there's mixed feelings' about what's happening to their alma mater, said Sarah Watson, a leadership development consultant who graduated from Mount Mercy in 2008. Still, she said, 'I know the great challenges that higher ed is facing right now. It's not just Mount Mercy. It's not just St. Ambrose. It's the bigger schools, too. Enrollment numbers have dropped. The desire to go to a traditional four-year college is just not quite what it used to be.' For Mount Mercy, which was founded by an order of nuns in 1928, Watson said, 'If we don't do this, what's the alternative? We want to be around for another hundred years.' After all, said Novak, the St. Ambrose president, 'to watch universities close across the heartland because we can't make it work will leave our communities fallow.' Carroll, of the Catholic colleges and university association, said that many other religiously affiliated institutions are closely watching what's happening at St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy. 'It's a leap of faith,' she said. 'And who better to take a leap of faith than a Catholic institution?' This story about and universities was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our . Listen to our
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Couple Celebrating 70th Wedding Anniversary Reveal Secrets to a Lasting Marriage
Don and Lorrie Davidson celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary on May 21 The couple revealed their best advice for a long-lasting marriage to Los Alamos Daily Post They both agreed to "not to go to bed angry with each other" and to "talk out your disagreements"One couple celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary is revealing the key to a long-lasting marriage. Don and Lorrie Davidson of White Rock, New Mexico, marked 70 years of marriage on Wednesday, May 21. The pair told Carol A. Clark of Los Alamos Daily Post what their advice is for younger couples hoping to reach seven decades together too. 'We believed our wedding vows never tarnished, they are as bright and shiny as they were 70 years ago!" Don said. "My advice would be not to go to bed angry with each other, work out the differences that arise. Most differences are not important in the grand scheme of life." He continued, "Give over 50% of everything. The reason I fell in love with her is that I felt she was the missing piece to the jigsaw puzzle of my life; without her, I am incomplete." Lorrie agreed with her husband's words of wisdom. "If there are differences of opinion, don't let them fester," she said. "Talk out your disagreements and don't go to bed angry at each other." The duo met at the Illinois Insurance Bureau office and were close friends before they entered a romantic relationship with each other. Don and Lorrie dated for a few years before tying the knot in 1955 at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Wheaton, Illinois, when they were 26 and 23 years old, respectively. Before settling in White Rock in 1973, the pair moved 14 times within their marriage for Don's job in the military and insurance business. Once in New Mexico, Don became a fire protection and safety engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Meanwhile, Lorrie ran The Shop on the Corner in the Episcopal church for 24 years. Over the years, the couple welcomed five children and gained 9 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. They have also been highly involved with Order of the Eastern Star, the Scottish Rite and Shriners, York Rite and are devout members of Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church. is now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more! Earlier this year, England-based couple Derek and Brenda Dodge, another couple who celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary, told the BBC in March that the key to a good marriage is "love, respect for one another, patience, being truthful and to understand you don't always have to agree." Back in January, centenarian couple Betty and Elton Denner reflected on the success behind their long-lasting marriage, just three months after celebrating their 82nd wedding anniversary. "Their advice for a loving relationship is simple: patience, don't win an argument, do things together, with each other and the Lord," the couple's daughter, Christie Regan, told PEOPLE. She continued, "They credit their faith in Jesus as the strength in their marriage, guiding them each and every day. The love of their Lord has blessed and sustained them." In February, the longest-living married couple at the time, Manoel Angelim Dino and Maria de Sousa Dino, said their answer to their 84-year union is simple: love. Read the original article on People
Miami Herald
21-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Losing faith: Rural, religious campuses are among the most endangered
DAVENPORT, Iowa - The Catholic prayer for the faithful echoed off the limestone walls and marble floor of the high-ceilinged chapel. It implored God to comfort the poor and the hungry. The sick and the suffering. The anxious and the afraid. Then it took an unexpected turn. "Lord, hear our prayer for St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy University," the young voice said, "that the grace of the Holy Spirit may help us to follow God's plan for our new partnership." The speaker was talking about ongoing efforts to unite St. Ambrose University, where this weeknight Mass was being held, with fellow Catholic university Mount Mercy. Small religious schools in rural states are shutting down at an accelerating rate, a fate these two are attempting to avoid. "Lord, hear our prayer," responded the congregation of students in St. Ambrose-branded T-shirts and hoodies. The heads of both St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy, which is in Cedar Rapids, said they've watched as nearby religiously affiliated colleges, athletic rivals and institutions that employed their friends and former colleagues closed. With falling numbers of applicants to college - especially in the Midwest - "we just don't have the demographics anymore," said St. Ambrose President Amy Novak. Now, as fewer graduates emerge from high schools, combining forces is a way to forestall "the reality that we might all see in five or seven years," Novak said. For many other small religiously affiliated institutions, time has already run out. See a list of religiously affiliated colleges that have closed, been merged, or announced that they are closing or merging. More than half of the 77 nonprofit colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2020, or announced that they will close or merge, were religiously affiliated, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of news coverage and federal data. More than 30 that are still in business are on a U.S. Department of Education list of institutions considered "not financially responsible" because of comparatively low cash reserves and net income and high levels of debt. Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. Some small, religiously affiliated institutions that are not on these lists are also showing signs of strain. Saint Augustine's University in North Carolina, which is Episcopal, has 200 students, down from 1,100 two years ago, and has lost its accreditation. The 166-year-old St. Francis College in New York, which is Catholic, has sacked a quarter of its staff. Catholic Saint Louis University in Missouri laid off 20 employees, eliminated 130 unfilled faculty and staff positions and sold off its medical practice after running a deficit. Bluffton University in Ohio, which is Mennonite, is looking for a new partner after a planned merger fell through in February and the president resigned. Catholic St. Norbert College in Wisconsin is eliminating 11 majors and minors and 21 faculty positions. And Georgetown College in Kentucky averted closing only after an alumnus gave it $16 million, which, along with another $12 million in donations, was enough to pay off crippling debt that was costing the small Baptist institution $3 million a year just in interest. Other religiously affiliated schools are also taking steps to buttress themselves against demographic and financial challenges. Ursuline College in Ohio, for instance, which has fewer than 1,000 students, has agreed to merge with larger Gannon University, 95 miles away. Both are Catholic. Spring Hill College in Alabama and Rockhurst University in Missouri, both also Catholic, are teaming up so they can jointly offer more academic programs, though they will remain independent. More than a fifth of colleges and universities in the United States, or 849 out of 3,893, are religiously affiliated, according to the most recent figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. The threats to them are getting new attention. Presidents of 20 Catholic universities and colleges met in November in Chicago at a conference sponsored by DePaul University and held at the offices of the Deloitte consulting firm, which collected data to help them figure out solutions to the challenges they face. "The intent was to think about a blueprint for the future of Catholic higher education," including more partnerships, shared services and other kinds of alliances, said Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. "Survival of the fittest is not the strategy that will advance the common good of Catholic higher education. We have to work together." The American Council on Education last year launched a Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities, with leaders of what has since grown to 17 institutions including Pepperdine, Brigham Young and Yeshiva universities and the University of Notre Dame. The idea of the commission, which is scheduled to meet in Washington in June, is "to increase visibility for the important contributions of religious and faith-based colleges and universities and to foster collaboration" among them. Some religious colleges and universities are doing fine, and even posting enrollment gains - at least in part because of growing political divisions, campus protests and ideological attacks on secular institutions, said David Hoag, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Parents are "wanting to put their son or daughter at a safe place that's going to have a biblical worldview or a way to look at challenges that's not polarized," Hoag said. "At our institutions, you're not going to be seeing protests or things that are happening at many of these [other] universities and colleges. You're going to see them rallying together, whether it's for a sporting event or for a revival or baptisms." Other trends also offer some hope to religiously affiliated colleges and universities. A long decline in the proportion of adults who consider themselves affiliated with a religion appears to have leveled off, the Pew Research Center finds. And while enrollment at parochial schools that feed graduates to Catholic universities fell more than 10 percent from 2017 to 2021, the most recent year for which the figure is available, the number of students at other kinds of religious primary and secondary schools is up. Even religiously affiliated institutions confronting the realities of falling enrollment and financial woes fill a critically important role, their advocates say. They often serve low-income students who are the first in their families to go to college and are reluctant to enroll at large public universities. Related: The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges - and the economy Many are in rural areas where access to higher education is more limited than in urban and suburban places and is becoming less available still as public universities in rural states have merged or closed or cut dozens of majors. Attending a small rural, religiously affiliated institution "is, I think - especially for rural students - a great opportunity," said Todd Olson, president of Mount Mercy, above the sound of trains crossing Cedar Rapids outside his window. "I know kids from very small towns around Iowa," like the one where he grew up, Olson said. "This campus is a much more comfortable place for them." When Jacob Lange arrived at St. Ambrose from East Dubuque, Illinois, and attended a Mass on campus, "all of a sudden all these new people I had never met were kind of chatting with me and it was really kind of nice. It felt like I was kind of included and I didn't really think I would be originally," he said. "You figure, 'I'm probably going to sit in the back and probably not talk to anyone all night,' and then I showed up, and I walked out here and all of a sudden they're, like, 'Here, come join our group.' " His parents also liked that he decided to go to a Catholic university, Lange said. "You know, you go to one of these big schools with 25,000 kids, and you're kind of worried about your kid - like, what kind of dumb things is he going to get up to?" Catholic universities in particular have a slightly higher four-year graduation rate than the national average, according to the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Mary's University in Texas. Graduates have a stronger sense of community purpose, the center found in a survey. Alumni are 9 percentage points more likely to say they participate in civic activities. Related:See Hechinger's list of all college closures since 2008 More students at religiously affiliated than at secular institutions receive financial aid, the American Council on Education says. Three out of five get scholarships from the colleges themselves, compared to fewer than one in four at other kinds of schools. At both Mount Mercy and St. Ambrose, which have about 1,450 and 2,700 students, respectively, 100 percent get financial aid. But these benefits for students can be vulnerabilities for budgets, said Novak, at St. Ambrose. "We serve the poor. We educate the poor," she said. "That is a risky financial proposition at the moment for small, regional institutions that are largely tuition-driven." The threats to smaller religiously affiliated institutions in rural areas stem largely from the downturn in the already short supply of high school graduates choosing to enroll. The proportion of such students going straight to college has fallen even more sharply in many largely rural states. While they're generous with their financial aid, religiously affiliated colleges are also generally more expensive than many other higher education institutions, at a time when many families are questioning the return on their investments in tuition. Median tuition and fees average $25,416 a year, according to the American Council on Education. Related: 'Easy to just write us off': Rural students' choices shrink as colleges slash majors St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy, about 90 minutes away,are teaming up from positions of relative strength. Publicly available financial documents suggest that neither faces the immediate enrollment or financial crises that threaten many similar institutions. But their leaders say that they're trying to fend off problems that could arise later. By joining forces, each can increase its number of programs while lowering administrative costs. Reaction among students and alumni has been mixed. Combining with St. Ambrose "was kind of nerve-racking at the beginning because it's, like, 'Oh, this is a lot of change,' " said Alaina Bina, a junior nursing major at Mount Mercy. She picked the university in the first place because she liked the small, hilly campus. "I came from a small town, so I didn't really want to go bigger," she said. "Even when I came here on a tour, people would say 'Hi' to each other. You just know everyone, and that's kind of how it is in a small town, too." Students were worried about what name would appear on their degrees (the degrees will still say "Mount Mercy") and whether sports teams that once competed against each other would be merged. Novak and Olson promised to keep their athletics programs separate and even add a sport at Mount Mercy: football, beginning in 2026. Combining sports teams "would not be wise at all from a business perspective," Olson said the two agreed, because they are "a powerful enrollment driver" for both schools. "Honestly, this was probably the biggest student concern," said Nasharia Patterson, student government president at Mount Mercy, who was wearing a brace on her wrist from an awkward back tuck basket catch during cheer practice. Keeping the athletics teams "gives us a piece of Mount Mercy specifically to just hold on to." Among alumni, meanwhile, "there's mixed feelings" about what's happening to their alma mater, said Sarah Watson, a leadership development consultant who graduated from Mount Mercy in 2008. Still, she said, "I know the great challenges that higher ed is facing right now. It's not just Mount Mercy. It's not just St. Ambrose. It's the bigger schools, too. Enrollment numbers have dropped. The desire to go to a traditional four-year college is just not quite what it used to be." For Mount Mercy, which was founded by an order of nuns in 1928, Watson said, "If we don't do this, what's the alternative? We want to be around for another hundred years." After all, said Novak, the St. Ambrose president, "to watch universities close across the heartland because we can't make it work will leave our communities fallow." Carroll, of the Catholic colleges and university association, said that many other religiously affiliated institutions are closely watching what's happening at St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy. "It's a leap of faith," she said. "And who better to take a leap of faith than a Catholic institution?" Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 orjmarcus@ This story about religious colleges and universities was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to ourhigher education podcast. The post Losing faith: Rural, religious campuses are among the most endangered appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
