Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills [ WSJ ]

The flava:

When he was the director of international student services at Syracuse University, Juan Tavares received a regular Saturday email from the dean of admissions reporting the tally of student applications, acceptances and enrollment deposits.

During the pandemic the numbers began to slide, so Tavares offered the admissions team seven suggestions to improve recruiting, he said. The recommendations centered on the idea that Syracuse was failing to recruit aggressively enough.

“The problem with Syracuse is that the school thinks of itself as like an Ivy, but it’s not,” Tavares said.

Tavares, who no longer works at the school, said his recommendations went nowhere. 

In 2025, the weaknesses he had pointed out collided with President Trump’s high profile crackdown on student visas. Syracuse’s international enrollment numbers declined by half for undergraduate and graduate students. 

Syracuse also failed to draw enough students overall—prompting it to offer emergency financial-aid packages to lure freshmen.

This school year, which began Aug. 24, enrollment fell short, sending the school into a 1.5% budget shortfall. 

Syracuse also added nearly half a billion in debt to build desperately needed new dorms, which brought on a bond market reprimand. And it recently cut programs it said weren’t popular. 

A national brand-name institution with a $2.5 billion endowment and a storied 150-year tradition is suddenly beginning to flail.

The problems that have long buffeted the nation’s smaller schools are now spreading to the nation’s bigger, richer universities—with midsize private schools such as Syracuse especially feeling the pinch. . . .      

The article:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896