The Whole Course: Junior College, Baccalaureate College, Near-Closure, Growth

1968 – 2026

The course, by era: The college's sixty years divide into four eras: the brothers' junior college, the transformation into a residential baccalaureate college, the near-closure of 2017 and its rescue, and the growth course since 2022.

The junior college era ran from 1968 to about 1990. Coeducational from 1968, the school grew through its first decade — the diocesan paper gives its enrollment growth across the first ten years as from 105 to 275 students, a starting figure that does not square with the forty-nine student brothers of opening day and is printed as the paper gave it, unresolved, in the note to this build. Its business was transfer: students came for two closely taught years and left for degrees elsewhere, and no alumnus carried that design further than Daniel Ruettiger, who passed through the college on his way to Notre Dame and whose story the 1993 film Rudy carried worldwide — the college's own history page treats the film as its moment of worldwide fame. Meanwhile the institution regularized itself: the Higher Learning Commission's record shows candidacy from June 1985 and accreditation from 19 June 1987, in the last year of its founding president's term. In 1990 it dropped the word Junior from its name.

The transformation era belongs to one presidency, Brother Richard Gilman's, from 1992 to 2010, whose building and residential works are printed in the presidents and buildings articles of this build. Under Gilman the college set out to stop being only a place students left. The decisive change was academic. Planning for a baccalaureate program began in the fall of 2002; in April 2003 the tri-campus student newspaper reported the bachelor of arts program's debut for that fall, the associate degree continuing beside it for students still aiming to transfer. The program began in the fall of 2003, and the first baccalaureate class graduated in 2005 — fourteen students, by the college's own 2014 enrollment release. By 2014 that graduating class had grown to 115, and nearly all of the college's students were enrolled for four-year degrees. Enrollment in the two-year era had peaked at 557 in the fall of 2001; the four-year college of 2014 enrolled 535, its second-highest figure to that date. One earlier thread widened later: its teaching inside Indiana's prisons, at Westville Correctional Facility and the Indiana Women's Prison, noted by the diocesan paper at the fiftieth anniversary and standing on the accreditor's record as an approved additional location at Westville.

The third era opened in success and closed in emergency. In 2013 the college and the university formalized the old transfer traffic in the Gateway Program: an invitation-only first year in which Notre Dame applicants judged just short of admission enrolled at Holy Cross, took four courses a semester there and a course at Notre Dame, and transferred as sophomores on a guaranteed basis if they held a 3.5 average and a clean conduct record. The pilot cohort of seventeen transferred entire; the program grew to about seventy-five freshmen a year, and more than ninety-five percent of the 287 students in its first six cohorts made the transfer. Gateway raised the college's academic profile — and its dependence on a single pipeline. Beneath it, the finances were failing. Operating budgets ran deficits reported at 139,000 dollars in fiscal 2014, 930,000 dollars in fiscal 2015, and 883,015 dollars in fiscal 2016; the college borrowed year by year, drew on restricted gifts, and took a two-million-dollar line of credit and a million-dollar bridge loan from the Brothers to reach the fall's tuition. By its rescuing president's later account, the debt stood above ten million dollars, some incurred for ambitious building, including a science building projected for a pre-medicine program without funding secured. The Higher Learning Commission ordered a four-year financial plan and an interim report due in June 2017. In May 2017 an administrator's email speculating about closure reached the whole student body, and for some weeks the college's survival was a public question.

The rescue of 2017 was a land transaction and a reorganization together. The college sold seventy-five acres along State Road 933 to the University of Notre Dame — twenty acres of its own and fifty-five of the Brothers' — and leased the ground back for one dollar a year for seventy-five years, with an option for fifty more; the sale cut the debt and supplied operating capital. Paige was replaced as president in April 2017 by Father David Tyson. Three academic programs were suspended, the administration streamlined, Notre Dame's dining operation took over food service, a three-year bachelor's track was introduced from 2018 beside a reinstated two-year transfer program, and by September 2017 the college reported its finances stabilized. The accreditor's record tracks the convalescence for years afterward: financial panel reviews in late 2017 and 2018, accreditation continued with monitoring after the comprehensive evaluation of January 2021, and a program-review interim report accepted with continued monitoring in June 2023. The college that entered the 2020s was smaller — 434 students in the fall of 2022, by the federal figures the encyclopedia record carries — but solvent, and still itself.

The fourth era, since July 2022, is growth under the college's first lay president, treated whole in the present-day article. The shape of the whole course is now visible: a college founded for its own order, nearly killed by building beyond its means, saved by selling its ground to the neighbor across the road while keeping the use of it, and entered into its seventh decade as a destination college that still keeps its founding transfer door open.

Sources:

1. Higher Learning Commission, statement of accreditation status as read — candidacy from June 1985, accreditation from 19 June 1987, the 1990 name change, 2016–2017 reaffirmation, 2017–2023 monitoring and financial-review entries, Westville as an approved additional location.
2. Today's Catholic, 2016 — first-decade enrollment as printed there, the prison programs, the Rudy film; Holy Cross College history page — the film and destination-school standing.
3. The Observer, 29 April 2003 — planning begun the previous fall, the baccalaureate debut in fall 2003, the associate degree's continuation.
4. Holy Cross College enrollment release, fall 2014, in document copy — the 2001 peak of 557, fall 2014 enrollment of 535, the first baccalaureate class of fourteen in 2005 growing to 115 graduates in 2014.
5. Notre Dame Magazine, Gateway account (winter 2019–2020) and brotherly-approach account — Gateway's 2013 pilot, growth, guarantee and transfer rates; first bachelor's degrees in 2005.
6. Inside Higher Education, May 2017; National Catholic Reporter notebook, September 2017; National Catholic Register, February 2018; Notre Dame Magazine — the fiscal 2014–2016 deficits, credit line and bridge loan, the accreditor's order, the closure email, the seventy-five-acre sale and leaseback, suspended programs, dining arrangement, and stabilization.