Emerson College Faces Grim Times With Lower Enrollment, Revenue After Anti-Israel Protests
“Last fall, enrollment at Emerson fell by 6 percent. Tuition and housing revenue from its 3,000-some students is down by around $16 million, administrators recently told faculty.”
As I have mentioned in the past, I am a graduate of Emerson College. It brings me no joy to see the school suffer, especially when my memories of going there are so bright.
The anti-Israel protests of 2024 cast a long shadow over the Boston school and they still have not recovered. The people who engaged in those protests damaged the school’s image, yet they remain defiant and seem to think that if they can’t take over public spaces, their free speech rights are being infringed.
Boston.com reports:
‘The worst-case situation for the college’: After protests and layoffs, where does Emerson go from here?
Ribbons of purple and gold snaked down Boylston Street in August as new students arrived at Emerson College for the fall semester. The sidewalk across from Boston Common buzzed with move-in carts and freshmen eager to experience what one parent called Emerson’s “driven while artsy” vibe.
But among the crowd were a few disgruntled Emerson employees distributing leaflets that served as a stubborn reminder of issues the school is eager to forget: rolling financial cuts, the 2024 arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, and a campus left fractured in the aftermath.
“When the president lives in a $5 million suite in the Ritz-Carlton, and librarians are being walked off their jobs, it begs the question,” read the leaflet from the staff union, angered by summertime layoffs. “What are Emerson’s priorities?”
The arts and communication college is facing the same financial challenges as small schools across the country. Slumping enrollment, mushrooming costs, and upheaval in federal higher education policy are driving more universities into the red. At Emerson, those problems are coming to a head alongside a fiery debate on campus about what the college stands for as higher education is under political attack.
Last fall, enrollment at Emerson fell by 6 percent. Tuition and housing revenue from its 3,000-some students is down by around $16 million, administrators recently told faculty. Not only has the college eliminated staff positions, it’s offering early retirement and buyouts to some professors.
In the year and a half since the 118 protest arrests cast a pall on campus, complaints abound that Emerson has strayed from its progressive values while under federal investigation for allowing antisemitism.
At the time of this writing, this is the top story at the student newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon:
13 protesters arrested, multiple officers injured at pro-Palestine protest in Downtown Boston
Thirteen pro-Palestine protesters were arrested, and multiple police officers were injured at a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) protest called “Two Years of Genocide,” the Boston Police Department confirmed with The Beacon on Tuesday night. The protesters, who remain unidentified, were arrested outside the Park Street T stop as they began marching across Tremont Street at around 6:50 p.m.
Officers began arrests after protesters reached the T stop, where, according to BPD’s report, they turned on police, kicking a marked cruiser, assaulting officers, blocking traffic, and setting off flare devices emitting red smoke.
Officers attempted to use bikes to block the crowd from crossing into the street, and many protesters fell or were thrown to the ground in clashes with police, where some were later held down and zip-tied. Several police officers were seen detaining individual protesters, and Beacon reporters on the scene saw one protester with an apparent leg injury.
It is this radical ‘Free Palestine’ ideology that is killing the school.
Emerson College would be wise to get back to the business of theater, journalism, filmmaking, acting, and public speaking.
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Comments
FO.
Shut it down.
Yep, this is the finding out part
Doubt it’s related. Colleges nationwide are seeing enrollment declines and we are talking about 6 percent of ~3,000.
But it is definitely fun to see asshats get poetic justice.
Yes, enrollment is only down 6% but I suspect that the quality of the enrollees is down considerably – in other words students were accepted who would have been declined in previous years to pad the enrollment.
A few years of this will drop Emerson’s standing as an aspirational school, and if they are unable to stuff the dorms with Chinese kids after that loss of status, income is going to decline as you can’t charge mediocre students from the midwest the same prices as rich foreigners will pay.
True that their acceptance rate probably went up, but I just don’t think doing something on brand for their niche of affluent snowflake kids would be a major factor in enrollment decline.
Emerson has been awash in stupid ideologies for years-being a school for the arts it’s very susceptible to every idiotic fashionable “movement,” including the current fascination with killing Jews. But before that it was trans, and before that the climate change, and before that etc. etc. I think it’s been a long time since they had any faculty that have a clue and any students, who have been successful in the arts enough to fund them. They are just an over priced brain washing factory for weirdo kids. Yes I do think Emerson was hurt by the violent pro Hamas display they put on, as Emerson is very reliant on alumni dollars being a small school that does not have many federal grants. Emerson doesn’t do research they are literally an art school, so no big federal monies will save them. And I think the alumni , some of whom are Jewish, were pissed off. Also while Emerson has foreign students they aren’t as much of a draw for the foreign wealthy professional protestor jet setters as Harvard and MIT. So likely Qatar isn’t going to be their huckleberry.
Well, bye….
Emerson College is actually a great school if you want to go into broadcasting, television or the theatre. It has many well known alumni, e.g., Jay Leno, Henry Winkler, and Norman Lear. Brett Winterble, the conservative talk show host went there. Lear created many shows including All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, Sanford and Sons and others. It’s really a good place to go if you’re interested in that area.
Norman Lear? If he were attending today, they’d be shoving and spitting on him.
Might have greatly improved All in The Family, tho.
Emerson was a great school I agree. But it hasnt been for a long time now. And alumni like Leno and Leary aren’t impressed.
I find my myself strangely uninterested and uncaring about Emerson circling the drain.
They aren’t on the payroll from Qatar? I guess they aren’t important enough.
well they FA … now they are FO….