When Closure or Merger Is on the Table: Communicating With Clarity, Care, and Strategic Foresight

Unlike most organizations, colleges and universities are more than employers or service providers. They are identity. They are memory. They are aspiration. Alumni, students, faculty, and staff often see their own stories reflected in the institution they, for a reason, often call “mine” or “home.”

When an institution faces existential financial pressure, the communications challenge is not simply operational. It is deeply human.

Having worked alongside leadership teams navigating these profoundly challenging situations, we’ve seen firsthand how essential it is to approach the problem with both strategic clarity and emotional care. Below are several principles we can offer from these experiences to help leaders and communicators when time is all too short for stakes that are exceedingly high.

1. Acknowledge the Magnitude of the Moment

An institutional closure carries ripple effects far beyond campus boundaries.

• Students may need to transfer.

• Faculty and staff may lose employment.

• Alumni may feel they’re getting disconnected from a part of their identity.

• Parents may wonder what their investment in their student’s education will be worth.

• Communities may suffer massive disruption to or loss of a civic and cultural anchor.

Avoiding saying what’s really happening will fool few and lose the rest. Leaders must be willing to: 

• State the truth of what could happen, honestly and respectfully. 

• Avoid mincing words about the financial and operational realities, at least to every extent possible within the bounds of legal and other reasonable prohibitions. 

• Be forthright about what those prohibitions are and the types of topics they prevent the institution from sharing. 

• Communicate as if to a worthy friend, not as if to some faceless mass audience.

• Avoid conveying any version of panic or defeatism.

• Point to whatever promising possibilities there may be, in good faith.

2. Get Clear on What You Know — and What You Don’t

The worst financial crises rarely allow the luxury of time. Regulatory obligations, accreditation requirements, bond covenants, labor agreements, and board governance realities can compress timelines dramatically.

Early on, you inevitably will not have every answer. What you can do as part of the due diligence:

• Clarify regulatory and financial obligations as quickly as possible.

• Understand what decisions are truly on the table, and which are not.

• Parse out the options, from the worst to the best, the plausible to the optimistic.

• Be transparent with the community about what you do know and can say, including about the options, and also about what remains uncertain.

The trust placed in a college or university by its students, faculty, staff, alumni, families, and community members sustains it across time. Clarity builds credibility. Credibility grows trust. Even partial clarity is better than vague reassurance. And our experience far and away argues that it is better to trust the campus community with the knowns—and with what has yet to be figured out. 

3. Communicate Regularly and Candidly

In a vacuum, fear fills the space. When final decisions cannot yet be shared, leaders should establish a manageable and regular rhythm of updates and share it. For example:

• “You will hear from us at least every few weeks for the time being.”

• “We will share next steps after the Board meets on X date.”

• “For those who cannot make the next open forum, we will provide a summary of the discussion promptly afterward.”

It is better to share regular updates with some information than to wait to provide some mythical comprehensive update. People usually tolerate uncertainty better than silence. A reliable cadence gives assurance, lets the community know you’re thinking of them, exhibits your trust in them, and helps prevent unfounded rumors from growing.

4. Remember Every Audience — and the Emotional Toll

Looking around a campus on any given day, you see how many people decisions like these affect. And it’s personal.

• Faculty and staff are processing worry, doubt, fear, and potential grief.

• Students are calculating the impact on the rest of their lives, not just their academic futures.

• Alumni are wondering what their degree even means, what happened to the place they knew, and even how a dramatic outcome could forever change how they think of themselves.

• Local leaders, businesses, and community members of every kind are worrying about economic and cultural risks out of their control.

Communication about issues of broad institutional consequence like these should make clear that the institution’s leaders recognize that reality and have every constituency in mind. They should honor the feelings of attachment and expectation. They should show they are indeed being attentive to institutional history, connections, and legacy.

And even if it comes to closure, institutions have many options they can take to protect reputation and honor decades, or centuries, of contribution—the legacy of so many who will be receiving those communications.

5. Bring the Necessary Counsel to the Table

In high-risk moments like these, no leadership team is fully equipped to navigate it all alone, including because they still have much of their usual jobs to do. Depending on the situation, institutions typically need some or all of the following outside expertise:

• Dedicated legal counsel

• Crisis communications and public relations support

• Government relations counsel, if a public institution especially  

• Human resources support

• Labor relations guidance (particularly if unions are involved)

Resources are often tight in precisely the moments when outside expertise is most needed. But strategic counsel can prevent missteps that compound damage.

6. Remember the Enduring Importance of Relationships

One of the most challenging dynamics is that operations do not pause while existential decisions unfold.

In one engagement, we were helping an institution plan for potential closure while simultaneously managing admissions communications and donor relationships. The work required precision: communicating responsibly about hard possibilities, without signaling institutional collapse before final decisions were made.

These parallel realities demand careful coordination between a full range of portfolios, including academic affairs, student life, finance, the board, communications, advancement and enrollment, government and community relations, and athletics.

7. If Survival Seems Possible, Convey the Hard Choices Clearly

Not every institution that faces closure ultimately closes.

Sometimes survival requires painful restructuring: program cuts, workforce reductions, and a narrower strategic focus. If that is the direction chosen:

• Be honest about the sacrifices required.

• Articulate the plan to restore stability.

• Frame change not as retreat, but as disciplined stewardship.

• Explain the greater institutional future that the pain will make possible.

Communities are more willing to accept difficult measures when they see a credible path forward.

A Final Thought

Whether an institution ultimately merges, closes, or finds a path to renewal, leaders can shape an institution’s future as much as its legacy by how they communicate.

Handled poorly, the process deepens division and accelerates reputational decline.

Handled thoughtfully—with clarity, cadence, counsel, and care—you can preserve dignity, honor affection and loyalty, and serve a campus community’s deepest values and wide impact. 

In higher education, institutions matter deeply. When their futures are uncertain, how we speak, and how we lead, matters even more.