Claremont Graduate University Seeks Merger Amid Budget Shortfall

Image via Wikimedia Commons. Copyright Sdkb.

In April, Claremont Graduate University (CGU) Interim President Michelle Bligh and Vice President of Strategy Patricia Easton informed the CGU community of the university’s decision to seek a merger. “I can tell you without reservation that I am very optimistic about our future, but success will require a change of direction,” Bligh wrote. 

According to Easton, a former CGU Provost and Vice President of Student and Enrollment Services, Bligh had determined as early as January 2024 that CGU’s financial situation was deteriorating: “[W]e had already done a lot of the playbook things you do to improve your financial standing — add programs, cut costs, expand the enrollment pipeline — but the university’s operational budget gap was still increasing.” 

To study potential options, Bligh formed the “New Models Committee,” which concluded:

“[W]e do not have the financial resources to continue going it alone as a graduate-only, comprehensive university. It was time to seek out a strategic partner or partners with a strong financial and academic foundation that by joining together would expand our opportunities for the future.”

In July 2024, CGU retained Tyton Partners, a consulting firm with a specialization in higher education. Throughout the fall semester, Easton wrote, CGU consulted with “faculty, staff, and other members of the community” to determine “the criteria we would use to screen potential partners.” By January 2025, Tyton had contacted over 100 potential partners, including “domestic educational partners, international educational partners, and industry partners.” In a statement to the Independent, Easton wrote, “We envision non-academic partnerships to be a component of a broader partnership with another academic institution.”

According to the email, “nearly a dozen academic institutions… have shown interest” in a potential partnership, though the search process is ongoing. Easton noted that partnering with an foreign college or university could hold particular promise: “My personal sense of the future is that with the globalization of education that’s happening, CGU needs to find its place in the internationalization of graduate education — both bringing the world here and taking ours abroad.” The email states that following a merger, students might “take classes at CGU, at the partner campus, online, or some combination of the three.” 

Easton wrote that CGU is only interested in a partnership that leaves all of the university’s programs intact. “We’re not going to… break off one school or program to work with one partner and leave others behind. We want to maintain the integrity of our campus and our community.” In addition, she noted that any potential partner must “resonate with the consortium. We don’t want a partnership to cause negative, disruptive change within the consortium.” 

CGU is far from alone in encountering financial trouble. According to Higher Ed Dive, 123 colleges and universities across the country have closed or sought mergers since 2016 as pressure to lower tuition, shrinking applicant pools, and lagging government funding have squeezed institutions’ finances. Other colleges have trimmed staff in an attempt to cut costs. On Tuesday, the University of Southern California (USC) announced it would begin layoffs in response to a $200 million operating deficit, joining the likes of Harvard, Cornell, and Duke, all of which have reduced staff in recent months. 

“[T]he costs of delivering education are going up and tuition revenues are going down,” Easton wrote. “A small university has to provide all the services and meet all the compliance requirements of a large university, and it's becoming too burdensome.” 

According to the email, CGU expects to have signed a memorandum of understanding with a partner by December, though approval by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges — the accrediting body that evaluates CGU — and the Department of Education may take longer. 

In a statement to the Independent, Easton was not able to confirm if CGU had settled on a partner at the time of publication, writing that “we remain in the confidential phase of exploration with potential partners.”