CLEVELAND — Colleges across the country and here in Ohio have been struggling financially.

What You Need To Know

  • Cleveland State University will offer buyouts to faculty and staff

  • The university is offering this as a way to help close an expected multi-million dollar gap

  • Many colleges across northeast Ohio are struggling financially

In northeast Ohio, there have been some major changes at higher education institutions, including at Cleveland State University, where they are offering voluntary buyouts to hundreds of staff and faculty members in an attempt to close a projected $40 million budget gap.

Michelle Martello, an instructor at Cleveland State University, said she fears the school will lose valuable employees.

“You’re gonna use key people at the university that the university needs to function and that is going to create other problems,” Martello said.

C. Todd Jones, the president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio, said Cleveland State’s issues are not unique and schools across the state are trying to figure out how to navigate a changing landscape.

“In the state of Ohio, traditional students, those 18-24, have been declining since about 2010,” Jones said.

He said the number of students in this traditional age group who choose to attend college is expected to continue declining.

“A particularly sharp spike that is about to come, related to the recession of 2008-2010. During recessions, people pull back on their finances and they put off having kids if they are planning to have them. So we simply have fewer people that were born that are now in their late teens,” he explained. “Add to that the increasing cost of mental health services because of increased mental health needs among young people over the last decade, and the last four years since the pandemic and on top of that the increased regulatory burden over the last 16 years from the federal government. There is simply more obligations to report more, do more and fill out more paperwork that increase the cost of providing hire education.”

Martello said she believes the lack of transparency from Cleveland State about this situation has caused her students to have anxiety about the college’s future.

“If a student goes here, and this is where they have created a life for themselves and a community for themselves and they feel like that is not stable, that affects them,” she said. “My concern is always that, that it will affect them.”

Spectrum News 1 contacted Cleveland State for a statement which did not respond by publication.