Fontbonne University to close in 2025

CLAYTON, Mo. — Fontbonne University will be closing after the 2025 summer session. Over the past century, 20,000 students graduated from the school. Washington University has made an agreement to purchase the 16-acre campus in the next month or two.

After many years of declining enrollments and a shrinking endowment, the school’s board of trustees voted to cease operations. The school will not be admitting freshmen in the fall of 2024 but there will be classes through 2025. All undergraduate students will get scholarships to cover tuition for the summers of 2024 and 2025.

The school says that this will help as many current students as possible to complete their degrees and graduate. Staff and faculty will remain employed until the university closes. The university plans to offer severance packages to all employees.

In November, Fontbonne University announced significant changes due to nearly $2 million in budget cuts, resulting in the loss of 21 academic programs and 19 faculty positions.

“I understand the administration is doing everything they can to mitigate the damages but there is still going to be damages. There are still going to be students who are tens of thousands in debt that will not be getting their degree,” said M.V. Laughlin.

Laughlin is an alumnus and is currently enrolled in Fontbonne’s art program, one of the 21 programs announced to be cut for budgeting.

“This difficult decision was not made lightly. Despite the best efforts of faculty, staff, administration and our faithful supporters, we have faced challenges, including more than 15 years of enrollment decline heading into the enrollment cliff, the impact of COVID, and many other financial struggles impacting small, private institutions like ours across the nation,” Dr. Nancy Blattner, Fontbonne University President, told students earlier Monday.

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Support is being provided to assist students in either graduating from Fontbonne or transferring to another institution to finish their college education. For those who cannot or do not wish to complete their degrees at Fontbonne, there are options to complete their degrees at other universities through teach-out agreements that are currently being finalized.

“We were in a series of conversations with potential partners to talk about strategic alliances, to talk about the possibility of merger or acquisition and all of those possibilities, of which there were many, were not successful,” Dr. Blattner said.

The announcement to close the 100-year-old school is not an easy decision, and the goal is to graduate as many students as possible.

“After commencement this May, we will have about 617 students that have not graduated,” she said.

Students like Laughlin and Abby Platte who are currently enrolled in a specialty program plan on learning as much as possible before the end.

“Knowing that these things are going to be lost with this or that this might be the last opportunity I’ll ever get this important information…that’s pretty sad,” Platte said.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet shared this statement on the matter:

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