Just months after announcing it was laying off 6% of its total employees this summer, Meredith College removed all of its academic deans from their positions leading the college’s four schools in November. Students protested the layoffs Nov. 10, also citing poor campus conditions like pests and mold in the living facilities.
Weeks after the protest, claims emerged Dec. 3 on social media that the deans that once led the historically women’s college’s four schools were now being placed on administrative leave with pay, despite the college previously telling media the deans would be offered faculty positions and no further staffing changes were anticipated.
Meredith spokesperson Melyssa Allen told Carolina Public Press because the reassignment of deans is a personnel issue, she could not provide further information or verify the claims of administrative leave. But Meredith will be “returning to a department-head structure for the academic division,” she said, as it has utilized in the past.
“This approach will empower department chairs with key decision-making responsibilities,” Allen wrote. “This structure is in line with that at most other colleges with a student population the size of Meredith’s.”
The Meredith community is questioning what’s driving these changes and calling for transparency from college leaders like President Aimee Sapp, who stepped into the role just last year.
Sounding the alarm
SarahElla Harlan graduated from Meredith this May with degrees in psychology and music. Harlan boasted 14 leadership roles on campus while raising her teenage daughter, who once had dreams of attending Meredith herself.
As an adult student, Harlan developed unique relationships with staff and faculty. She continues to be involved in the Meredith community, often finding herself on campus twice a week for choir events or to aid psychology professors in their research. But in recent months, Harlan’s perception of Meredith has soured.
The economy and political climate has necessitated a lot of change for higher education institutions, Harlan said. She recognizes there likely needed to be changes at Meredith in order for it to remain strong. But the way the changes were enacted felt alarming, she said.
The day of the layoffs, Harlan heard of staff being escorted across campus and made to gather their things on the spot. Some who were let go had their email accounts deactivated almost immediately, leaving them no way to access valuable information. Some weren’t far from retirement, she said.
“Even if cuts had to be made, and I’m not saying cuts didn’t have to be made, there was such a better way to go about doing this,” Harlan said.
While it surely wasn’t the intent, Harlan said the changes have negatively impacted the academic and student experience.
Meredith is a part of the Cooperating Raleigh Colleges partnership that allows students to take classes at surrounding colleges for class credit. Harlan said students are having to utilize this more frequently in order to fulfill their graduation requirements. In some cases, requirements are waived entirely because “the faculty doesn’t exist anymore,” she said.
Aside from staffing, student concerns about the sanitation of living facilities range from rodents to fleas to mold. When Harlan was serving on the Student Government Association board as president of Wings, the college’s adult education program, they had been receiving concern reports on the state of the dorms for years, she said.
Meredith hosted a town hall earlier this year to hear student input on campus life. Because of her former position on SGA, students expressed frustration to Harlan over how the meeting went, saying they felt insulted and gaslighted by how the administration responded.
“They were told, ‘We want to hear from you. We want to hear these problems,’” she said. “Then the students brought up problems, and they were told, ‘You’re gossiping. Stop spreading rumors.’”
Allen told CPP that student concerns regarding facilities will continue to be given a high priority, though many have been addressed.
“Many of the issues mentioned by students have already been addressed, and our Facilities team is working to resolve other concerns as quickly as possible,” she wrote.
“Longer term, Meredith’s facilities director is working with an engineering firm to perform a campus infrastructure analysis and master plan to address HVAC, electrical distribution, building envelopes, and related systems for the future, with an emphasis on the residential buildings. The information from this review will be used in the strategic plan, the next fundraising campaign, and to inform the campus facilities master plan.”
Signs of strife at Meredith?
Local small private colleges have struggled this year in an environment where some students crave a large state-school experience, CPP previously reported.
St. Andrews University in Laurinburg closed its doors this spring, citing financial difficulties. St. Augustine’s University, an HBCU in Raleigh, remains open after years of accreditation struggles but continues to face challenges like debt and low enrollment. Limestone University in Gaffney, South Carolina, about 55 miles from Charlotte, also announced its closure this year after a sharp enrollment decline and garnering $30 million in debt.
Protesters posed questions about Meredith’s budget deficit, which was projected to be around $7 million, and ProPublica data shows Meredith’s expenses began to outweigh its revenue for the first time since 2012 by $5.8 million in 2024. Sapp announced in an email to alumni shortly after the November protest that steps were being taken to decrease the deficit to $1.8 million.
Meredith’s enrollment has also fallen slightly to about 1,600 total students, down from around 1,800 in the fall of 2020. WRAL reported Meredith’s tuition will increase by 4% next year to $49,170.
Meredith’s identity as a historically women’s college — though the school now admits men to its graduate programs — could be working against it. Just like the number of small co-ed colleges closing their doors, women’s colleges have dwindled, too. A 2022 study found that 31 women’s colleges remain in the U.S., down from what was once around 200.
Rather than closing their doors altogether, women’s colleges may first transition to co-ed institutions to try to bring in more revenue. Going co-ed could also be a way for schools to signal a forward-thinking mindset, said Scott Novak, a founding partner at the Small Colleges Consulting agency.
Even if small colleges are not struggling financially, many are still having to make tough calls about campus operations, Novak said. Recent decisions by Meredith could be a symptom of that.
“Letting go of some academic deans is certainly not something they would want to do,” he said.
“I sympathize with Meredith, because they have to make very difficult choices in an environment that is very challenging. … Without knowing the infrastructure and what’s going on there and the specifics of the reasons as to why, I’m sure they tried to do the best they could to not affect the student experience in the classroom. And sometimes maybe that means letting go of the academic deans.”
Allen previously said the removal of deans was not done for budgetary purposes but to better support students’ needs and increase faculty’s direct access to the provost.
If not due to budget cuts, Novak said the decision regarding the deans could simply be a reallocation of money and resources or a way for Meredith to explore growth opportunities without as many high-earning positions on the payroll.
As for the future of Meredith, Harlan said it feels like the college is “at a fork in the road.”
“I think that at any point the trustees could step in and say, ‘This is not acceptable,’ and they could start making moves to look for different leadership,” she said.
“At any point the current administration could step forward and start to be accountable for their actions and start to be transparent and start to be honest. Meredith has so many people that love it and will fight for it and will sacrifice for it and will give for it. Alums will be there. Alums would have filled that gap, that $1.8 million (deficit). They would have filled that had they known.
"But I don’t know how many alums want to donate to a college that is clearly not being honest with what they’re doing with their money or why they’re making their decisions.”
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
