This is the first article from The Hilltop Monitor addressing recent academic, athletic and personnel changes to William Jewell College. More stories may be published as the Cardinal community receives more information.
On Feb. 3, 2025, the president and Board of Trustees of William Jewell College announced changes to the academic and athletic profile of the College. Jewell’s declaration of financial exigency enabled an internal financial exigency management committee and the Board of Trustees to address the College’s financial situation by sharply reducing its faculty, staff and academic programs.
The College’s Board of Trustees approved the proposed changes on Jan. 22. Some of these changes include the following.
Creation of academic divisions
All majors and academic programs have been reorganized into five new Academic Divisions:
- Business and Communication
- Behavioral and Natural Sciences
- Analytical Science
- Community Engagement and Applied Arts
- Culture, Society and Justice
Regarding the new Academic Divisions, emails to students from faculty members have informed them that faculty members “remain dedicated to providing [them] exceptional opportunities” to help students achieve their goals, and that faculty will continue to “assist [students] in [their] academic and professional success.”
Further details about what this academic shake-up means for students are unclear at this time.
Phasing out of programs
Additionally, the College has chosen to phase out certain majors and other programs.
On the academic side, the College has chosen to phase out Nonprofit Leadership, Healthcare Leadership, Integrated Healthcare, Theatre, and Musical Theatre. This means that the College will not be allowing new students into these majors, and has ceased recruitment for Theatre programs.
The discontinuations will not take effect until next fall, so students graduating in May 2025 are unaffected by these changes. For students graduating after May 2025, the College has told students that “teach-out planning is underway to ensure currently enrolled students can complete their major as planned.”
Higher Learning Commission (HLC) guidelines permit teach-out plans. However, provisional plans submitted to the HLC must provide a “fair and equitable” plan to students and “[provide] students with reasonable opportunities to complete their education without additional charges” (emphasis added). In other words, students currently enrolled at Jewell must be able to graduate with their current degree program at the same cost as before.
The reduction in majors and programs offered is being accompanied by other reductions across the College. The Honors Institute in Critical Thinking, the Cardinal Sound athletic band, and French language courses are all being discontinued. (Note that Jewell does not currently offer French as a major, only Applied French as a minor; the Honors Institute is not a major either). The effects of these removals are currently unclear.
Across all these changes, the College notes that “[s]tudents in impacted programs have been engaged by faculty and leadership to learn more and plan.”
College administrators also clarified that all athletic programs are continuing through the spring as planned. With that said, it is unknown which athletic programs will persist into the next academic year. The College is currently convening “an athletics task force” that “is working to complete the new vision for Cardinal Athletics before the end of the academic year.” Cardinal Athletics have not yet provided details of this change.
Faculty and staff layoffs
Despite savings from these removals, the financial exigency committee chose to lay off many faculty and staff. Hilltop calculations using Department of Education data suggest that 20-30% of the College faculty have been laid off. The College’s declaration of financial exigency in Dec. 2024 enabled it to remove any or all faculty, including faculty members with tenure, as part of the restructuring process. Without the declaration of financial exigency, tenured faculty could not otherwise be dismissed in this manner.
Ultimately, 45 faculty and staff lost employment with the College. These included 13 retirements and resignations, and the involuntary removal of 14 faculty and 18 staff members. College administrators claim that they are “grateful to faculty for engaging in meaningful ways in this process to ensure Jewell’s relevance,” and assure the Cardinal community that Jewell is still a “leading higher education institution.”
Two Cabinet members will also leave the College. Vice President for Access and Engagement Dr. Rodney Smith will voluntarily be leaving the College and Jewell’s page emphasizing its commitment to diversity is currently down. The current vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Daniel Jasper, has accepted a position as provost of Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.
As of the time of publication, it is still unclear what people and what positions have been terminated by the College. However, it seems that many beloved members of the Jewell Community are either no longer working at the College or will not be returning next fall; this includes employees who have worked at Jewell for years and, in some cases, even decades.
Impacts on the bottom line
As a non-profit receiving public funding, William Jewell College is required to publish IRS form 990, which guarantees some degree of financial transparency. Its most recent filing indicates that the College lost $12 million in the fiscal year ending June 2023. In the same year, an internal audit identified a “deficiency in internal financial or governance controls that could inhibit the College’s ability to ensure compliance with federal regulations” or to “track and report financial data reliably.”
That said, a Feb. 3 letter to the Cardinal community notes that after implementing these changes, “Jewell has identified 95 percent of the college-wide goal of $7 million in reductions ahead of 2025-26.”
The remaining $5 million will be recouped through “improved net tuition revenue, and additional expense management initiatives over the course of the next academic year.” While the College has announced that it will raise tuition 4.5% in 2025-26, the particulars of further savings have not been specified. These numbers suggest that after implementing this set of changes, the College will have ensured its financial stability.
Through the process, College administrators report that they “are committed to ensuring the Jewell community has the information it needs throughout this journey.”
This story is developing.