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SG-009 Catholic university · Wisconsin 2023

Cardinal Stritch University — America’s Largest Franciscan University, Emptied in a Decade

enrollmentclosed2020s
Lifespan
1937–2023 · 86 yrs
Peak Enrollment
~5,000+ (2011)
Killed By
enrollment cliff
Status
Closed

Summary

Cardinal Stritch University, a Catholic institution in the Milwaukee suburbs of Fox Point and Glendale, founded in 1937 by the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, announced on April 10, 2023 that it would close at the end of that spring semester, winding down on May 22 after a final commencement the day before. It was, at its height, one of the largest Franciscan universities in the United States — a regional powerhouse in teacher education and adult degree completion that had enrolled more than 5,000 students at its 2011 peak. Twelve years later it enrolled barely a quarter of that, and the arithmetic that had carried it for 86 years no longer closed.

The institution had begun as St. Clare College, a teacher-training school founded by the Franciscan sisters to educate members of their own order. It was renamed in 1946 for Cardinal Samuel Stritch, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, became coeducational, and grew steadily into a comprehensive university — granted university status in 1997 — with a national reputation in education and a large, lucrative adult and graduate market. That market was its strength and, in the end, its exposure. When enrollment in education programs and adult degree completion softened across the 2010s, Cardinal Stritch had built its scale on exactly the segment that was contracting fastest. Enrollment fell from more than 5,000 in 2011 to 2,345 in 2019–20 and to 1,365 by the fall of 2021 — a decline of roughly three-quarters in a decade.

President Dan Scholz, announcing the closure, called it a "no-win situation," citing fiscal realities, downward enrollment, the pandemic, the need for more resources, and mounting operational and facility costs. The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, who had founded the university and still sponsored it, accepted the board's recommendation to close. Cardinal Stritch arranged a robust set of teach-out agreements — with Alverno, Mount Mary, Carroll, Marquette, and others — that guaranteed admission and full credit transfer so students could finish on time and at comparable cost. What ended was not a small struggling college but the flagship of Franciscan higher education in the upper Midwest, hollowed out so quickly that its closure came as a shock to a city that had assumed it too big to fail.

Timeline

1937
Founded as St. Clare College
The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi establish a teacher-training college in Milwaukee, initially to educate members of their own religious order.
1946
Renamed Cardinal Stritch College
The college is renamed in honor of Cardinal Samuel Stritch, the Archbishop of Milwaukee.
1962
A new campus
The institution moves to a campus straddling Fox Point and Glendale, north of Milwaukee, less than a mile from Lake Michigan.
Late 20th c.
Growth in education and adult learning
Cardinal Stritch builds a national reputation in teacher education and a large adult degree-completion and graduate market, expanding to more than 60 degree programs.
1997
University status
Cardinal Stritch College becomes Cardinal Stritch University.
2011
Peak
Enrollment crests above 5,000 students, making Stritch one of the largest Franciscan universities in the United States.
2010s
The slide begins
Demand for education and adult-completion programs — the core of Stritch's market — softens; enrollment falls year over year.
2019–20
Down to 2,345
Enrollment has fallen to 2,345, less than half the 2011 peak; the pandemic compounds the decline.
Fall 2021
1,365 students
Enrollment reaches 1,365 — roughly a quarter of the 2011 figure.
Apr. 10, 2023
The announcement
Administrators announce, via a recorded video, that the university will close after the spring semester; the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi accept the board's recommendation.
May 21–22, 2023
Final commencement and closure
Cardinal Stritch holds its last commencement on May 21 and ceases operations on May 22, after 86 years.
July 2023
Campus sold
The campus is sold to the Ramirez Family Foundation for a new K-12 school; most buildings are slated for demolition, with the gym, library, campus center, and fine-arts buildings preserved.

The Franciscan Flagship of the Upper Midwest

Cardinal Stritch was a teaching order's college before it was anything else. The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi founded St. Clare College in 1937 for the most practical of Franciscan purposes — to train the women of their own order to staff the Catholic schools of the archdiocese — and that DNA never left it. Renamed in 1946 for the cardinal who shepherded Milwaukee's Catholics, relocated in 1962 to a leafy campus near the lake, and opened to lay students and then to men, the college grew across the second half of the century into something larger and more ambitious than its founders had imagined: a comprehensive university, granted that title in 1997, with more than sixty undergraduate and graduate programs and a reach that extended well beyond the cloister.

Its growth engine was education and adult learning. Cardinal Stritch became a regional name in teacher preparation and a heavyweight in the adult degree-completion and graduate market — the working teachers, principals, and professionals pursuing degrees and credentials in the evenings and online. At its 2011 peak it enrolled more than 5,000 students, a scale that made it one of the largest Franciscan universities in the country and a fixture of Milwaukee's higher-education landscape. For a Franciscan order whose founding charge had been to teach, presiding over the largest Franciscan teacher-producing university in America was a kind of vindication. It was also a concentration of risk that no one fully priced until the market it depended on turned.

A Quarter Left in a Decade

The collapse was not a single event but a steady, decade-long evacuation. The programs that had built Cardinal Stritch's scale — education and adult degree completion — were precisely the ones that contracted hardest in the 2010s. Teacher-preparation enrollments fell nationally as the profession lost prestige and pay failed to keep pace; the adult-learner market that Stritch had cultivated fragmented as for-profit and online competitors flooded it and the post-recession surge in adult enrollment receded. A university that had concentrated its growth in those segments found its core eroding faster than it could replace it. Enrollment fell from more than 5,000 in 2011 to 2,345 by 2019–20 — less than half — and the pandemic accelerated what was already a rout, driving the figure to 1,365 by the fall of 2021.

The arithmetic of a tuition-dependent university does not survive losing three-quarters of its students. Fixed costs — a campus, its buildings, its maintenance, a payroll built for a far larger institution — do not shrink as fast as enrollment, and the gap between them is paid out of reserves until the reserves are gone. Cardinal Stritch accumulated deficits across the same decade its enrollment fell, and by 2023 the board and the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi confronted a structural deficit no one-time fix could close. President Dan Scholz called it a "no-win situation," and the phrase was accurate in the literal sense: there was no version of a much smaller Cardinal Stritch that could carry the cost of the campus and the institution the larger one had built. The scale that had been its pride had become a weight it could no longer lift.

A Recorded Goodbye, and a Careful Exit

The announcement, on April 10, 2023, arrived as a recorded video — a flat, institutional medium for the end of an 86-year-old university, and one that underscored how little warning preceded it. To a city that had thought Cardinal Stritch too large and too established to fail, the news was a genuine shock. Yet the closure itself, once decided, was handled with care. Stritch closed at the end of a semester, not in the middle of one; it held a final commencement on May 21 and ceased operations the next day. And it did the hard, unglamorous work of arranging real landing places for its students, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves.

The teach-out arrangements were unusually thorough. Cardinal Stritch signed agreements with a roster of southeastern Wisconsin institutions — Alverno College, Mount Mary University, Carroll University, and Marquette University among them — that offered automatic admission to Stritch students in good standing, guaranteed acceptance of all successfully completed Stritch credits, and a path to finish a degree in about the same time and at about the same cost. Marquette's president publicly offered help with Stritch's most urgent needs, hosting transfer and job fairs and even hiring a Stritch faculty member to shepherd doctoral students through their dissertations. The institution was dying, but it spent its last weeks ensuring that the students who had trusted it would not pay for its insolvency with their degrees. For a Franciscan university, it was the right way to leave.

The Five Factors

01
Concentration in one market is leverage in both directions
Cardinal Stritch built its scale on education and adult degree completion, and when those exact segments contracted in the 2010s, the concentration that had powered its growth became the channel of its collapse. A university diversified across many fields would have lost some students; one built on the segment in steepest decline lost most of them.
02
Fixed costs don't shrink at the speed of enrollment
A campus, its buildings, and a payroll sized for 5,000 students cannot be cut to fit 1,365 fast enough to matter. The gap between rigid costs and falling revenue is paid out of reserves, and when the reserves run out the institution does too — the structural deficit is arithmetic, not mismanagement.
03
The enrollment cliff is a national undertow, not a local failure
The decline in teacher-preparation and adult enrollments was a sector-wide trend driven by demographics, the falling prestige of teaching, and online competition. Cardinal Stritch's leaders did not cause it and could not reverse it; they could only manage the descent, which is a different and lonelier task than running a growing institution.
04
Scale is a vanity metric when the balance sheet is bleeding
Being one of the largest Franciscan universities in America said something about volume in 2011 and nothing about solvency in 2023. The size of the enrollment at the top of the curve offered no protection on the way down; the only number that mattered in the end was the deficit.
05
A semester boundary and a real teach-out define a humane closure
Cardinal Stritch closed at term's end, held a final commencement, and secured guaranteed-admission, full-credit teach-out agreements across the region. The same insolvency, announced midyear with no transfer plan, would have stranded thousands; the orderly version let them finish. The manner of the closing is the part the institution controls.

Aftermath

For the students, the careful exit largely worked. The teach-out agreements with Alverno, Mount Mary, Carroll, Marquette, and other southeastern Wisconsin institutions meant that those near the end could finish and the rest could transfer with their credits intact, at comparable cost — the closure was disruptive but not, for most, degree-ending. Faculty and staff bore the harder loss: an 86-year-old employer vanished, and a university payroll built for thousands of students dissolved into a regional job market that could absorb only some of it. The Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, who had founded the institution to extend their teaching mission, were left to preside over its end.

The campus found a second life with a familiar irony. In July 2023 it was sold to the Ramirez Family Foundation to become a new K-12 school — the property founded by a teaching order to train teachers returning, after demolition of most of its buildings, to the work of educating children. The gym, library, campus center, and fine-arts buildings were preserved; the rest came down. Cardinal Stritch entered the record as one of the larger Catholic university closures of its era and a stark illustration of its central lesson: that an institution's size at its peak is no insurance against its collapse, and that a university can lose three-quarters of its students in a decade while a city assumes it permanent.

Lessons

  1. Diversify the academic portfolio: a university whose scale rests on a single market — here, education and adult completion — rises and falls with that market, and concentration that looks like strength in growth becomes fragility in decline.
  2. Right-size the cost base to enrollment before reserves are exhausted, because fixed costs lag falling revenue and the gap, once it opens, is paid in a depletion that ends in closure.
  3. Read scale skeptically: being among the largest of one's kind is a statement about volume at the peak, not about the health of the balance sheet on the way down.
  4. For sponsoring religious orders, monitor a university's enrollment trend as a fiduciary signal, not a marketing figure; a three-quarters decline over a decade is a closure foretold, not a rough patch.
  5. When closure is unavoidable, the gold standard is Cardinal Stritch's exit — a term-end stop, a final commencement, and guaranteed-admission, full-credit teach-out agreements so students finish on time and on budget.

References