Notre Dame College Will Close After Spring Semester

May 2 will be the final day students walk through the doors of Notre Dame College.

On Thursday evening, the board of the South Euclid school announced that it will be ending its 102-year-long operations in Northeast Ohio this spring, and sending students elsewhere, despite years of attempts to save itself from financial ruin.

As Scene reported in December, Notre Dame admins began talking this November in earnest about the viability of a healthy spring semester. Such talks came just weeks after former president Michael Pressimone "voluntarily" resigned, an official statement read, "to pursue new opportunities." In July, the Sisters of Notre Dame, the coalition of nuns that founded the school, severed ties with the university.

Notre Dame's shuttering is resemblant of a national trend for smaller colleges and universities. A delayed ripple effect from the Great Recession, colleges with four-figure student counts are attempting to fight declining enrollment and steep operation costs with last-ditch fundraising grabs and—which is usually the case—cutting personnel, slashing budgets, even saying bye to under-attended majors.

“Throughout this long process, we evaluated every possible option to continue the mission of Notre Dame College," Terri Bradford Eason, chair of Notre Dame's Board of Trustees, wrote in a press release this week. “Our primary focus has been to ensure our students can successfully continue their education, graduate, and—in the tradition of the Sisters of Notre Dame—live a life of personal, professional and global responsibility.”

Those lives of global responsibility will most likely be happening locally for most of Notre Dame's 1,400 students. As per the school's new partnerships, finalized in February, students with over 60 accumulated credits under their belt will be able to transfer to one of nine nearby schools, which include: Baldwin Wallace, Cleveland State, Hiram, John Carroll, Kent State, Lake Erie, Ursuline, Walsh and Mercyhurst in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Students with under 60 accumulated credits, those with "good standing," "may have the opportunity" to transfer to one of the aforementioned schools, was all the release said.

As in the case of Baldwin Wallace and Lakeland Community College, the internal management of funds predating the pandemic era has some linkage, said many interviewed by Scene, to colleges on the brink—or over the brink—of shutting their doors.

Despite averaging a net income of $468,864 since 2011, the Notre Dame's books may have been thrown by its Covid-era contributions in 2019, 2020 and 2021, when the school reported gains of $2.4 million, $1.4 million and $1.9 million. Last year, with 83 percent of its revenue hailing from "program services," the school ended its year at a loss of $823,389, its worst of the past 11 years.

"I've been watching the pattern. You can see revenue declining and expenses increasing," one former employee told Scene back in December. "Personally, I think they probably should have been much more cautious about their expenditures over the last few years."

Working "tirelessly for years on multiple fronts," the release stated, the board tried refinancing debt, combining these American Rescue Plan Act dollars and state grants, even leveraging its own centennial celebration as a 100-year fundraising campaign. (And pursuing mergers with two universities.)

Yet, “these heroic efforts were not enough to close the financial gap in time to satisfy debt obligations and allow the school to continue to operate independently," the release said.

Students at Notre Dame will be able to get a head start on their Fall 2024 plans when the school hosts an exciting "Partner College/University Fair" event on Wednesday, March 13 from 12:30 to 5 p.m. at Notre Dame's Keller Gymnasium.

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