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Dave Larsen writes about higher education.
Kelly Mori writes about health and higher education.Home > Blogs > On Campus > Archives > 2008 > May > 09 > Entry
Last-minute deal for Antioch College collapses
YELLOW SPRINGS — The Antioch College Continuation Corporation, the alumni group that has tried to negotiate deals with Antioch University trustees to keep the college open next year, said today that trustees rejected its 11th-hour offer of money in exchange for board seats. This is the second time the board voted down an ACCC offer, and the second time it has “reaffirmed” its June 2007 decision to temporarily shutter the campus. The failed negotiations has both sides pointing fingers at the other as the culprit.
The ACCC offered a large donation — $9.5 million immediately and then another $6 million for other university campuses — in exchange for 10 seats on the 19-member board of trustees, which would have given it a majority vote, it said. The college could continue operating, the group said, while allowing the board more time to legally separate the college from the university.
Eric Bates, co-chair of the ACCC and an Antioch alum, said the following in a press statement:
“It almost defies belief that the trustees could reject this extraordinarily generous offer by a group of major donors,” he said. “We were not only prepared to make an immediate contribution of $9.5 million for Antioch College, we offered to make an additional contribution of $6 million for the direct benefit of the University’s five other campuses. This was a win-win opportunity for the entire University, and the trustees squandered it.”
The university, in its released statement, said it voted Thursday, May 8 against the ACCC proposal because because it would have resulted in the forced resignation of existing trustees and create an “untenable” leadership structure for the remaining five-campus system. It seems to have hinged on one trustee. The university was concerned about ceding control of the university to the ACCC. It also said the ACCC plan still lacked a business plan with financial benchmarks - one of their original beefs with the first ACCC plan.
Antiochians meanwhile accuse the university’s chancellor, Toni Murdock, of running out the clock. And a group known as Non-Stop Antioch said Friday it will support faculty whose contracts end June 30 and their efforts to keep teaching an Antioch education somewhere in Yellow Springs. Former Antioch College development officers are managing the College Revival Fund and about $16 million in cash and pledges for the effort. The group has opened an office in Yellow Springs and plans to slap the university with lawsuits.
Keep reading for the key points of the ACCC plan.
According to the ACCC statement, key points of its proposal included:
• Ensuring that the eventual separation of Antioch College would be done in a manner that protects the University’s accreditation and financial security • Ending the annual subsidies each campus currently pays to the College • Guaranteeing that funds from other campuses would not be used to offset any operating expense or deficits incurred by the College • Implementing an existing plan to create separate governing boards for each of the campuses • Creating a new board committee to directly address the needs of each campus • Initiating an ambitious fundraising campaign to raise an additional $100 million for the College and assist the other Antioch campuses in their fund raising efforts.
“We are deeply disappointed that the trustees did not take advantage of this historic opportunity,” said Lee Morgan, a director of the ACCC. “Under this agreement, the University would have gained a number of experienced trustees who bring tremendous resources - not just finances, but expertise and energy - on behalf of the entire University.”
Morgan, a Yellow Springs business owner, is the grandson of Arthur Morgan, the college’s 1920s-era president who pulled the college out of near-bankruptcy in the 1920s and introduced the world to the concept of cooperative education. Arthur Morgan also saved Dayton from future flooding after the 1913 flood. As head of the Miami Conservancy District, Arthur Morgan developed the flood-control dam system on the Great Miami River.
Lee Morgan had volunteered to work half-time - for no charge - to raise money for the College beginning in June.
A first round of negotiations broke down March 28. In a tentative deal, the university agreed to a purchase price of $12.2 million for the college and the ACCC would take legal control. Trustees then rejected the offer because it needed the entire $12.2 million up front at closing to keep its creditors satisfied, it said. The ACCC had offered half the amount at closing and payment of the rest over a 5-year period.
The ACCC had been negotiating with university officials since December to buy the college to make it an independent institution. Negotiations took on a sense of urgency in late February, when the university trustees reaffirmed their June 2007 decision to close Antioch College for a year starting this June, after initial negotiations with the ACCC did not produce an agreement.
More later on the details of the negotiations. There’s a three-page timeline of the negotiation details I have to slog through.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment | Categories: Antioch College
Comments
By susan
May 9, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this
I smell a rat … an educated ratBy Rowan
May 9, 2008 11:21 AM | Link to this
The business geniuses at Antioch University who think that a $14.5million gift is a bad idea must be commended. That takes seriously incompetent guts to turn down.By glenn
May 9, 2008 12:24 PM | Link to this
Oh…there is so much more money to be made…and we will turn Yellow Springs into a gated community with lots of McMansions filled with good Republicans. Glen Helen will be turned into condos and all the hippies will be tasered. HahaHaBy MrGodot
May 9, 2008 12:48 PM | Link to this
Look out, Yellow Springs: you are about to be Bigtime BRAC-ed.By Christian
May 9, 2008 1:08 PM | Link to this
This is a sad and very disheartening day for the Dayton area, and for the higher education community.By Jeff
May 9, 2008 1:22 PM | Link to this
Just a thought, where were all of these donors 5 years ago, two years ago? Isn’t it ironic that capitalism, the one dirty word on the campus, is the reason for its demise… No relevant academic programs lead to no students, provides no revenue, and the doors closed. I hate to see it close, but the administrators kept their heads in the sand and ignored reality and the alumni did not hold anybody accountable.By himself
May 9, 2008 1:39 PM | Link to this
Well, It seems that Antioch McGregor is going to win, and another Liberal Arts college will fall to make way for yet another on-line MBA machine. Sad, really. I tremble to think of what will happen to WYSO.By cultureco
May 9, 2008 2:32 PM | Link to this
I concur Susan, they will be back in business soon enough and in control of the board as well.By Starcastic
May 9, 2008 2:42 PM | Link to this
Congratulations to the Antioch Board for sticking to their convictions. The first ACCC proposal was obviously ridiculous, you simply don’t purchase a university on an installment plan. Moreover, the opinion of the Board was immaterial, it was the institutions creditors approval that was needed. Their latest brilliant plan does have a number of notable improvements over the first but still falls short. Firstly, the ACCC whiners are the same people that would be raising all sorts of hell if a couple large donors were suddenly given Board seats, it’s deliciously ironic that they are proposing the exact same thing. Most importantly, their plan, despite its good points, rests solely on the supposition that they’re able to raise a huge amount of money. If its taken them this long to raise a (comparatively) small amount then how realistic is the $100 million that is crucial to their continued existence? The alumni ignored this for far too long, and now it’s too late.By AmandaF
May 9, 2008 2:42 PM | Link to this
My friend went to antioch they had the students raise over one million dollars they were told would go to the college. It really went to building McGregor off campus. They’ve been planning this for years. I hope they feel good about killing Yellow Springs.By Bobby Dale
May 9, 2008 3:22 PM | Link to this
I had a friend who went to Antioch in the early 1980’s. I would drive up from South Dayton to visit him on the weekends. At that point the school was in bad financial shape. The buildings were falling apart. Based on what I saw then I would venture to say the campus will be demolsihed & the land sold for developement. Yellow Springs is rapidly becoming a suburb of Dayton. I visited YS the final weekend. It seemed to already be very commercial compared to what it once was…a small town in the country. Sigh…By Bob
May 9, 2008 6:21 PM | Link to this
Jeff wrote “No relevant academic programs lead to no students, provides no revenue, and the doors closed. I hate to see it close, but the administrators kept their heads in the sand and ignored reality and the alumni did not hold anybody accountable.” Sorry Jeff, but Antioch College’s programs have ranked at the very top of the National Survey of Student Engagement for the last five years, and Antioch is among those institutions producing the most grads going on to PhDs in the nation. In the last two years the College produced 4 Fulbrights. How many area colleges have that sort of track record? On the other hand, the Board-imposed curriculum cut enrollment in half in just two years. This joke-of-a-Board, accountable to no-one, has done their level best to smother the parent institution in order to inherit the assets.By rodmunch
May 10, 2008 10:27 AM | Link to this
Bob, Antioch is a toke, i’m sorry a joke. Who cares about some obscure national survey, surveys mean nothing. I also laugh at the PhD statement you grabbed from the air. Is it that hard to get a PhD in arts and crafts, bongos, or some sort of social study? I think not. Antioch’s track record has been garbage since the sixties. Face it the music has died and the party is over in the Glenn. Time to pack up the guitars, weed pipes, and hemp necklaces and head back to real life.By Oldprof
May 10, 2008 11:28 PM | Link to this
I am not a prof from Antioch, just to keep perspective. Jeff and Starcastic and Rodmunch: obviously you haven’t got complete information. The Antioch board didn’t reveal that it considered the college in trouble until AFTER they made the decision to close it. The board neglected the campus for years before closing; it’s now almost derelict. Frankly, I don’t understand how the Yellow Springs city commission can sit quietly while the heart of their community is reduced to a vacant slum; why are they not initiating action to take over the property for sale to the highest bidder (which I think ACCC with several million just might be)? The simple fact is that the Antioch System board and president have either been ignorant of real conditions, or they have lied to their alumni and interested public—not only about Antioch College, but about WYSO. Please educate yourselves about those issues before you spout misinformation.By ZundapMan
May 12, 2008 11:25 AM | Link to this
If you followed the sequence of events since the AU board first declared intentions to close Antioch College, it would be clear that the board NEVER INTENDED for a plan to keep the college open to succeed. Actions like laying off the corporation fund raising staff after years of neglecting to set proper priorities for fundraising from Alumnae represent breach of feduciary responsibility and should be taken into account. Frankly, the “image” and the “reality” of Antioch College have never been well synchronized by the institution or many of its various sometimes conflicted constituencies. There has been a lot of high quality teaching and learning goine on in Yellow Springs over the past century and a half and more. It is unfortunate that so many choose to take “points of view” which hide and distort the complexity and diversity of the parties to this latest example of organizational incompentence and institutional failure.By stalins ghost
June 6, 2008 7:35 AM | Link to this
Too bad.They helped the cause a lot.By Beau
July 9, 2008 3:57 PM | Link to this
It would be poetic justice for the “tokey’, anti-establishment era of Antioch college to be replaced by a branch or clone of Liberty University, with a pro-American, pro-western civ & western religious based ideals that also prepares students for life in a more tradtional, patriotic, God respecting society.By Beau
July 9, 2008 3:58 PM | Link to this
It would be poetic justice for the “tokey’, anti-establishment era of Antioch college to be replaced by a branch or clone of Liberty University, with a pro-American, pro-western civ & western religious based ideals that also prepares students for life in a more tradtional, patriotic, God respecting society.