Ohio Dominican University has become the latest Catholic college in the Midwest to show financial trouble after it missed a bond payment.
Columbus, Ohio-based Dominican did not make the March payment on $49.98 million of Series 2018 revenue bonds, issued for the university by the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority, according to a posting on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's
The bonds were issued without a rating.
Negotiations with bondholders resulted in the bond payment being forgiven, according to a media relations representative for the university.
"The trustees of Ohio Dominican University have been working collaboratively over time with its bondholders to address ODU's debt," the university said in a statement. The university's liabilities, which include $45.57 million of outstanding debt from the Series 2018 bonds and a $2 million line of credit, total $49.67 million, according to the
"The conversations are confidential but have been productive and focused on reaching consensus on a mutually agreeable path forward," the statement said. "The EMMA filing that cited a missed bond payment was triggered by regulatory reporting requirements that did not factor in the terms of our ongoing and confidential discussions with the bondholders, which eliminated the requirement to make a March bond payment."
The school is also searching for a new chief financial officer, according to a posting on LinkedIn.
The statement added that the university hopes to hire a new CFO soon, and "university trustees and administrators are working diligently to improve operational efficiency, streamline costs in a challenging market for universities nationwide, and assuring a strong path forward for ODU."
The university reported a total enrollment of 1,139 in the fall of 2025, including 1,004 full-time students.
Ohio Dominican reportedly has said it has no plans to close its doors. But other Catholic Church-affiliated colleges in the region have had to do so.
Lourdes University, in northwest Ohio, shuttered at the end of the most recent academic year.
Chatfield College, a two-year college with campuses in Cincinnati and Brown County, Ohio, closed its doors in early 2023.
Michigan's Siena Heights University shut down at the end of the recent academic year. After assessing the college's financial straits, operational challenges and long-term prospects, administrators concluded "continuing operations beyond the coming academic year is no longer feasible," the college said
Marygrove College in Detroit had
Fontbonne University in St. Louis shuttered in
Across the region, other private religious schools remain open but continue to struggle.
Saint Catherine University in Minnesota embarked on a cost-cutting campaign in 2024 to address a fiscal 2023 operating deficit that
St. Norbert College, in De Pere, Wisconsin,
Saint Louis University cut staff and eliminated 130 vacant faculty and staff positions in October 2024. In a letter to faculty and staff, President Fred Pestello said the college's enrollment, endowment and revenue were not keeping up with expenses, and
Iowa's St. Ambrose University acquired Mount Mercy University, and last June, the colleges began the
It's not just Catholic colleges that are foundering. Finlandia University, tied to the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Michigan Upper Peninsula's only private college,
Trinity Christian College, in Palos Heights, Illinois, shuttered at the close of the recent academic year. In
Concordia University, a Lutheran private college, decided to
Distressed colleges "tend to be local symptoms of a national disease," said Gary Stocker, founder of College Viability, which offers college financial health and viability tracking tools.
"This isn't just happening in the Midwest; it's happening more acutely in the Midwest, more acutely in the Northeast," he said. "But if we're looking at parameters, they are small — less than 1,000, maybe less than 1,500 students — and they're typically non-urban in small communities."
What happens in many cases is that "these colleges try and hold on too long, and they give their students and their faculty in the community short notice," Stocker said.
"Many of these more recent closures, in the last couple of years, it has been bond default — lack of compliance with covenants — that has been a quiet story," he added.
A decisive factor, he said, is whether colleges are able to meet bond covenant terms and whether bondholders strictly enforce their rights or try to work with the colleges, as was the case for Ohio Dominican.
Net student revenues at Ohio Dominican improved in 2024 after steadily declining since 2020, according to
Other colleges that are in trouble have also seen their unrestricted net assets drop, albeit by more modest margins. St. Catherine University experienced a 14.24% drop.
Saint Norbert College saw its net student revenues drop 7.63% from 2020 to 2024 even as its unrestricted net assets improved. And Saint Louis University saw its adjusted operating revenue fall 19.65% even as net student revenue and unrestricted net assets trended upward.
"It's a revenue issue, in large part because of market forces, and it's also an expense issue," Stocker said. "I can show you time after time where… (colleges have) a chronic inability to manage expenses in conjunction with revenue. That's the big deal, and that's associated with pricing, with the price pressure on tuition."
With too many colleges and a demographic cliff driving demand from students down, that price pressure is growing more intense. That is especially true for religious colleges, many of which have historically catered to socioeconomically disadvantaged students seeking tuition discounts and other financial aid.
But it's not only enrollment that Stocker looks at in weighing college viability, he said. It's also the college's net tuition revenue and unrestricted net assets that can act as early warning lights.
"There are dozens… of private colleges in the country whose (unrestricted net assets) value is a negative number," he said.
Stocker said labor costs are another consideration weighing on colleges and universities, with faculty tenure making staffing reductions "very difficult to manage."
Right now, he said, news coverage of college closures often features quotes from students who say they were stunned to learn their school was shutting its doors. But he expects more high school seniors and their families to start scrutinizing a college's finances before committing to attend it.
"We're probably heading toward a tipping point," he said. "What happens when we get to the point where students and families check the financial health of the college first… and they see they only graduate 40% of their students in four years, they see that their finances are bad? It's easy to understand what happens when students say, maybe privates in general are risky."
