Financial Crisis Causing Fontbonne University To Close Summer Of 2025

Only a few months after it took several steps it hoped would stem a mounting financial crisis, Fontbonne University, a private Catholic university in St. Louis, announced today it would close in the summer of 2025.

Founded over a century ago, Fontbonne plans to sell its 16-acre campus to nearby Washington University, which did not reveal any immediate plans for the property. It will not admit students for next fall, but instead will focus its efforts on helping as many current students as possible graduate in the next year.

Last November, facing a budget shortfall of $5.2 million, Fontbonne University released a “retrenchment plan” through which it planned to eventually close 21 academic programs and eliminate 19 faculty positions. Those moves were expected to save the university more than $2.3 million in Fiscal Year 2025.

But it wasn’t enough. Announcing the decision, Nancy Blattner, Fontbonne’s president, said that it was “with deep sadness and great regret that I am announcing Fontbonne will not admit a freshman class in fall 2024. After many years of declining enrollments and a shrinking endowment, the financial position of the university is no longer able to be sustained for the long term.  As a result, earlier today, the university’s Board of Trustees voted to cease operations effective summer 2025.”

In an attempt to graduate as many students as possible, Fontbonne will continue to teach classes through summer of 2025. It also will offer additional classes to students at no cost due to scholarships during summer 2024 to help them complete their coursework on campus. 

To facilitate timely graduation, Fontbonne will let undergraduate students take an overload (more than 18 credit hours) without additional tuition charges beyond full-time tuition in the fall and spring semesters. Also, graduate students who take summer coursework as part of their degree program will be able to do so at a reduced rate of $675/credit hour. Students who complete their degree requirements by the time of Fontbonne’s closing will receive a Fontbonne degree.

Fontbonne will provide all current students “with information about and assistance with completing their degrees at another university if they are unable or unwilling to complete their degrees at Fontbonne,” said Blatter. Teach-out agreements with other colleges and universities in the area are in the process of being finalized.

In the past ten years, the university had seen its enrollment decline from about 2,000 students to fewer than 900, and it acknowledged it simply no longer had the resources to continue to operate beyond summer 2025.

In addition to the budget cuts it had taken earlier to try to survive, Fontbonne had also sought to partner with another institution. However, neither strategy proved successful, leaving its board of trustees little choice but to close.