On a sunny Sunday morning in late May, Gal Dahan steps to the lectern and gazes over the packed crowd that has gathered at the Wisconsin Center for Cardinal Stritch University’s graduation ceremony, the last in its 86-year history.
The undergraduate commencement speaker, clad in a black graduation gown and white stole, adjusts the uncooperative mortarboard that sits atop the dark hair that drapes past her shoulders. Surrounded on the stage by a host of university leaders, faculty and a few other speakers and presenters, Dahan launches into an emotional talk touching on the unprecedented challenges that this graduating class has faced during its time at Stritch. First, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered the learning and social environment on campus. Then, with student life finally returning to normal, came the devastating announcement that the North Shore Franciscan college would permanently close.
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Over its two-plus hours, this final commencement swings between moments of jubilation and the raw emotion stemming from the stunning decision to close the institution, announced just weeks before graduation and with no public warning. Many of those walking across the stage to collect their degrees – and the loved ones and faculty and staff in the audience – are still trying to figure out where it all went wrong, but at least they were able to finish. Students not collecting degrees this day are scrambling to find new schools, and employees from lecturers to administrators to housekeepers are looking for new jobs.
In her address, Dahan, a native of Israel who’s a psychology and communications major and four-year basketball letter winner, touches on the troublesome situation but, true to the occasion, spins it positively.
“As we are standing here today, brave and strong, we should remember that even if Stritch will no longer physically exist, it will always exist in our hearts, minds and souls,” she says. “My heart goes out to all the students, faculty members and the Stritch community that will no longer be able to serve as part of this incredible family and institution.
“However, do not forget the life lessons you learned, the people you met along the way, the resilience you developed, the achievements you all made and, most important, the impact you made on the community and the future impact you are going to make. … We are, we were, and we will always be part of the university’s community and legacy.”
The crowd rises in unison, cheering loudly as Dahan steps away from the lectern.
The weight in the room shows on the faces of many in attendance, including Cardinal Stritch President Dan Scholz. He delivered the news of the closure via a video address in April in what he described as a “profoundly sad” message: that the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi had accepted the recommendation of the university’s board of trustees to permanently close the school. “We are all devastated by this development, but after examining all options, this decision was necessary,” he said in the message. “I wish there was a different path we could pursue.”
Today, Scholz chokes up multiple times as he addresses graduates. He tells the soon-to-be graduates that they have “an exceptional responsibility before you as the final graduating class from Cardinal Stritch University. … You are the institution’s lasting legacy.
“While it may seem as though you are leaving Stritch, you really aren’t,” Scholz says, his voice breaking. “You take with you the spirit of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, who founded our university, and all of our faculty and staff members who served our students for more than eight decades.”
AT A POINT in the not-so-distant past, Stritch was among the largest of the country’s 23 Franciscan colleges and universities. Founded in 1937 as St. Clare College, it was renamed nine years later for Samuel Alphonsus Stritch, former Archbishop of Milwaukee. At its closing, Stritch offered more than 60 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, including business, education, liberal arts, leadership, nursing and sciences, at its 44-acre campus straddling the border of Glendale and Fox Point. It competed in several intercollegiate sports under the nickname Wolves – the school’s beloved mascot, Wolfie, was awarded an honorary degree at the final commencement – and won a 2013 NAIA Division II national title in men’s basketball.
Stritch’s student body was racially diverse and included many first-generation students. In fall 2012, Stritch enrolled more than 4,614 students (2,799 undergraduates and 1,815 graduate students), according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment figures declined every year from that point on and had plummeted to 1,365 students (877 undergraduates and 488 graduate students), a decline of more than 70%, by fall 2021, the most recent year for which official statistics are available.
As enrollment declined, tuition and fees jumped to more than $35,000 in 2022-23, an increase of nearly 43% since 2013, according to federal data.
Scholz blamed a set of “fiscal realities” – that downward enrollment trend, the pandemic, the need for more resources and mounting operational and facility challenges – for creating a “no-win situation” that forced the closure.
But it’s clear that the school’s demise runs even deeper; observers say constant turnover at the top of the institution over the past 15 years hindered Stritch.
“There were leadership issues,” says Maggie Balistreri-Clarke, who served as vice president of student development and dean of students at Cardinal Stritch and spent more than a decade at the school before a 21-year stint in a similar role at Edgewood College in Madison. “They’d come in with these grandiose ideas and leave a short time later.”
“I think the leadership and the tone of the school began to change, and then the environment began to change.”
– Maggie Balistreri-Clarke, Former Cardinal Stritch Administrator
Balistreri-Clarke, a graduate of St. Mary’s Academy, an all-girls high school operated by the Sisters of St. Francis that closed in the early 1990s, remained passionate about Stritch after her tenure there but watched in dismay as the university shed enrollment and churned through leaders.
It was a different story during Balistreri-Clarke’s stretch at Stritch from 1981 to 1991, when the college began a major push into adult education, a cutting-edge move that turned into a financial boon. Over that period, enrollment skyrocketed from about 400 students to more than 3,000. “It was mainly a degree completion program,” she says. “It was pretty innovative.”
The development of the adult education program came under the leadership of Sister Camille Kliebhan, who joined the Stritch faculty in 1955 and served as its president from 1974 to 1991. She also spearheaded both Stritch’s transition from a women’s college to a fully coed institution by 1970 and a major expansion completed in 1985. Balistreri-Clarke described Kliebhan, who served in the mostly ceremonial role of chancellor until her death in 2018 at age 95, as a “force of nature.”
“She had a real charismatic personality. People loved her and would do a lot for her. That was another piece of the success,” Balistreri-Clarke says. “When you have this charismatic leader and this very imaginative program, it certainly brought lots of money into the college.”
The influx of revenue allowed Cardinal Stritch to launch a massive building program that led to the construction of a gym, library and student union. “The building program essentially doubled the footprint of the campus, and it really revitalized the traditional programs, too,” Balistreri-Clarke says. “Stritch was ahead of the curve in adult education, had a captivating leader and some faculty that were just stellar.”
After Kliebhan’s retirement, Sister Mary Lea Schneider would serve as Stritch’s president until 2008 – a 34-year span with just two leaders. But then the college shifted away from Franciscan leadership, beginning a series of four presidents in its final 15 years, none of whom served more than six years. Scholz, previously a chair of the religious studies department, was named Stritch’s 10th president in June 2021 after serving a year as interim president.
“There was, over the years, a mismatch with leadership,” Balistreri-Clarke says. “The other thing that happened is that the environment changed in higher education and more and more schools were taking a look at the kind of things Stritch was doing and realized that adult education could really be a cash cow. Stritch may have been one of the first to get into adult education, but suddenly everyone had that kind of program. Stritch did really well, but I think the program kind of ran its course.”
There was also the failed effort to create a $150 million second campus on the expansive Mary Mother of the Church Pastoral Center property in the South Shore community of St. Francis. That plan was scrapped in 2009 due to troubling economic conditions. “I think the leadership and the tone of the school began to change, and then the environment began to change,” Balistreri-Clarke says.
The final straw for Stritch, she says, was the crushing COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath amidst a decline of the college-age population, she adds. Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines continuing even after students returned to in-person learning. The dip in the college-going rate is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “This remains a terrible time for private higher education,” Balistreri-Clarke says.
STRITCH’S CLOSURE PUT IMMENSE PRESSURE on students to find new schools – ones that would be willing to admit them on short notice.
Jacob Carlson, 21, was student government president at Stritch and was set to complete his junior year when word came down about the school’s plans to abruptly shut down.
“I’ll never forget that day. It was something that took us all by surprise. None of us were ready for it,” says Carlson, who majored in business administration and corporate communications at Stritch. “It was really devastating.”
The situation left Carlson working to finish his final semester at Stritch while scrambling to find a new college to attend for his senior year. After a whirlwind process that began within a day or two after the announcement of Stritch’s pending closure, Carlson connected with admissions officials from Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon.
“The admissions team at Concordia all knew we were going through a lot,” Carlson says. “They really stepped up to the plate and just wanted to help.”
After receiving an acceptance letter, Carlson enrolled in Concordia, began scheduling classes and spent the latter part of the summer on campus serving as an admissions student ambassador. “I’ve been learning the ropes of campus life here,” he says.
Within a day of Stritch’s closure announcement, Concordia reached out to Stritch students, including Carlson, through social media and professional networking outlets and offering special grants for former Stritch students. Concordia and many other colleges joined student recruitment fairs on the Stritch campus and job fairs for the nearly 500 Stritch employees out of a job.
“Cardinal Stritch has quite literally been our neighbor, so the entire executive team of Concordia felt a direct sense of loss at news of its closure,” says Michael Uden, Concordia’s vice president of student enrollment. “We were resolute to provide swift and strong support, however possible.”
As of late July, more than 200 former Cardinal Stritch students had completed and submitted applications to attend Concordia. About 35% were already fully registered at that time and another 15% were ready to enroll. The other half were still working with Concordia’s admission team.
“Like Concordia, Cardinal Stritch was an institution founded and guided by a distinctly Christian mission. For that reason, we felt compelled to reach out to students who may have sought that initially in their higher education search,” Uden says. “More broadly, the entire higher education community wished to provide support to the displaced students, staff and faculty of Cardinal Stritch, recognizing the changing and challenging landscape of higher education.”
The Campus’ Future
It appears that the North Shore property that had housed Cardinal Stritch University for nearly nine decades will remain in use for education.
The Ramirez Family Foundation, which catalyzed St. Augustine Preparatory Academy on Milwaukee’s South Side, announced in July that it had acquired the 43.5-acre campus for $24 million. The foundation was mum on specific plans but said the Stritch facilities – 12 buildings with a total of 607,000 square feet of space – lend themselves to educational ministries. Established by longtime Husco International CEO Agustin “Gus” Ramirez and his wife, Becky, the foundation opened St. Augustine Prep in 2017. The school is in the midst of a $49 million expansion that will increase its capacity from 1,500 to 2,400 students – the largest single-campus school in Milwaukee.
STRITCH’S CLOSURE not only left current students and employees in the lurch, it forced an alumni group serving 40,000 graduates to disband.
That cut off access to the database of alumni contacts, says Camilla Sparks, who was in her second term as volunteer president of Stritch’s Alumni Association. The university didn’t create any platform that would allow alums to remain in contact, she says.
Sparks, who holds three Stritch degrees and works as the senior human resources manager at the Greater Milwaukee Urban League, had no knowledge of Stritch’s financial woes or that the school was considering closure. She was preparing to speak on a panel to incoming MBA students this spring when word came down that Stritch would close.
“It’s been very, very shocking. Something that we didn’t foresee,” Sparks says. “There was no mention that the school was in a financial crisis or a crisis of any sort. When the news broke, it was very alarming. Even with me attending Stritch and earning three degrees, there was no mention of it to me about even going the route of closing.”
Struggling colleges seldom go down without a fight. They boost tuition, sell off assets, take from the endowment, consider mergers and make impassioned appeals to alumni and students, even if it’s obvious that their backs are against the wall.
Sparks says she’s disappointed that Cardinal Stritch’s leaders didn’t make a plea to students, the general public and, most of all, the school’s vast network of alumni to keep the university operating. “That’s what we’re here for, as alums, to help with recruitment. We know that word of mouth is so important,” Sparks says. “It’s hard because we weren’t asked to help push the recruitment strategies.”
Sparks says she was attracted to Stritch by what she described as the rigorous curriculum and the flexibility provided along the path to earning her degrees. “Any time I hear the Stritch name it’s very sad,” she says. “It’s like ripping the bandage off each time, because I believe Stritch still had so much potential. But it was here today and gone tomorrow.”
CARDINAL STRITCH UNIVERSITY survived more than a dozen recessions over its history, but in the end, the university couldn’t outrun a combination of factors, including plummeting enrollment, constant turnover in leadership, the drying up of its limited resources and the COVID-19 pandemic, which seemingly dealt the fatal blow.
Those forces are far from unique to Stritch; in recent months, several other ailing colleges around the country have announced plans to close, while others have merged with more financially viable institutions.
Here in Wisconsin, Holy Family College in Manitowoc closed its doors in 2020 without warning, much like Stritch. The 85-year-old school, run by Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, had just 362 students enrolled for its final semester and was the last college to shut down prior to Stritch. A week after Stritch announced its closing, Marian University in Fond du Lac cut staff and eliminated more than a dozen majors and minors due to declines in enrollment and revenue.
Cardinal Stritch’s demise was a topic of conversation at a recent gathering of the Association of Franciscan Colleges and Universities at Siena College in Upstate New York.
“We’re all in a little bit of mourning because we hate to see a school like Cardinal Stritch, with such a great tradition and such great values, not be able to make it,” says Jeff Gingerich, president of St. Bonaventure University in rural western New York. “We’re all feeling for Stritch. We’re all just kind of watching and knowing that there before the grace of God go all of us. It’s tougher and tougher for small schools. It’s a bigger challenge every year.”
“It’s like ripping the bandage off each time, because I believe Stritch still had so much potential. But it was here today and gone tomorrow.”
– Camilla Sparks, President of Stritch’s Alumni Association
St. Bonaventure has succeeded where many institutions haven’t in recent years, last fall posting its largest incoming undergraduate class in 20 years.
“We are looking very good again for this fall, too,” Gingerich says. “We’ve been paying a lot of attention to adding academic programs that really fit the market demand. We’ve added more than 20 undergraduate majors. A big part for us was adding a school of health professions. We now have programs like nursing, occupational therapy and physician assistant studies.
“In addition to that, the name of the game is diversification, because you just can’t rely on the undergraduate, residential students to keep you financially sustainable over time. So, we’ve also grown our graduate programs and our undergraduate online programs.”
Colleges and universities are also expanding their sports programs to attract more students. St. Bonaventure – known nationally for occasional NCAA Tournament appearances by its Division I basketball programs – has added men’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s track in recent years. “Our latest addition is esports, which is really in huge demand from students,” Gingerich says.
But even for institutions that have mitigated the many challenges, storm clouds remain on the horizon. One of the biggest hurdles involves simple demographics, with fewer and fewer young people, particularly in the Midwest – meaning fewer and fewer high school graduates. This will create what experts are calling a “demographic cliff” that is expected to hit colleges and universities in 2025.
There’s also the ongoing challenge in convincing prospective students that a degree from a private college or university is worth the money.
“It’s clear to me in the data that it’s a great investment, particularly private higher education at small schools,” Gingerich says. “But it’s very easy for a prospective student to say, ‘I’m going to save money by going to a public school’ or ‘I can get a job without the college degree.’ A lot of stats back up that it is a great investment, but we have to continue to make that case.”
Rich Rovito won five 2022 Milwaukee Press Club awards, including silver for his May 2022 feature on architect Santiago Calatrava.
