CLEVELAND — Rumors have been swirling about the future of Notre Dame College in Northeast Ohio, as smaller schools continue to struggle with decreasing enrollment and rising costs.
Joshua Dames is a basketball player at Notre Dame College. He is an international student from the Bahamas.
“It’s been a roller coaster for me,” Dames said. “I grew up in a little island off the coast of Florida, so being here is a great experience for me and it shows a lot of kids back home that anything is possible with hard work and determination.”
He said he playing at the college level is a dream come true and his teammates have turned into family.
But, the college athlete said he has heard rumors that his school is in danger of closing.
This speculation could come from the fact that the Sisters of Notre Dame, the order of nuns who founded the college 100 years ago, severed ties in 2023.
“There has been a lot of speculation, but nothing has been cleared or said out front,” he said. “It has been kind of a worry, but at the same time, the only thing I can focus on is just helping my team and focusing on being a student.”
Spectrum News 1 reached out to Notre Dame College regarding the rumors and the interim president, John J. Smetanka, responded via email.
“We are engaged in an ongoing strategic planning exercise to maximize opportunities to continue our mission into the future and serve our students in the best way possible,” he said. “We will continue to update our school community as we move forward with this process.”
C. Todd Jones, president of the Association of Independent Colleges & Universities of Ohio, explained that colleges of all sizes are seeing a decrease in enrollment numbers.
“The reason is fairly straightforward. There are fewer traditional college-age students in the state of Ohio ages 18-24,” Jones said. “Ohio is a state unlike parts of the south and southwest where we are just not having as many young people existing to go to college.”
Jones added that enrollment numbers are likely to continue this downward trend with another steep drop in enrollment expected to happen in three years, because of fewer babies born during the great recession.
“These institutions, many of them, have existed for 150 years and you look at how did they survive that long, through the depression, through world wars,” Jones said. “The answer is they carry out their mission and they do so with a smaller or larger group of students, and I think that will be the great adjustment, so to speak, and people will be changing how their colleges operate and focus on what makes them strongest.”
In the fall of 2020, Notre Dame College had just under 1,050 full-time students. It’s not clear what would happen to students like Dames, who is on an athletic scholarship, if the school were to close.
“It’s kind of a lot, because my family is really dependent on me, like me being here is something that not only helps me, it helps them as well. So I feel like wherever I’m going to school, I want to make sure it’s a secure place but at the end of the day, I’m not in control of that,” Dames said. “The only thing you can do is have faith that everything will work out. That’s what my mom always taught me.”