ADRIAN, Mich. — When Siena Heights University’s final commencement ceremony began on Saturday, the fieldhouse was packed with families celebrating 440 graduates. By the time 22-year-old nursing student Rollan Mattson walked the stage as the program’s last graduate, the ritual also marked the end of the 107-year-old institution — one of a growing number of small private colleges in Michigan unable to survive an enrollment and financial crunch.
Siena Heights, founded by the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 1919, announced its closure in June 2025 and spent its final academic year helping current students graduate or transfer. Actor and comedian Bill Murray, whose sister is a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, gave a surprise commencement speech. “You don’t need a building to be who you already have become or who you will become,” Murray told the graduates.
The school’s problems, however, had been building for years. Enrollment slid from a reported high of 2,707 in 2015 to 1,782 by fall 2021. Tuition steadily rose, reaching $30,500 for the 2025-26 academic year, the university said. That figure compares with an average in‑state cost of $17,754 at Eastern Michigan University, about an hour’s drive away, and $22,084 at Michigan Technological University, the state’s most expensive public college.
“It’s unfortunate that it seems to be the small, private institutions that have a faith-based affiliation that have been impacted, whereas if you’re a state school or a state institution, you have different funding pools to pull from than a small, private institution,” Siena Heights president Cheri Betz told Bridge Michigan. She also linked the enrollment decline to lower birth rates, adding, “You cannot recruit students who were never born.”
The squeeze is not unique to Siena Heights. In Michigan, Finlandia University, a Lutheran‑affiliated school in the Upper Peninsula, closed in 2023. Marygrove College, a private Catholic institution in Detroit, ended its undergraduate programs in 2017 and graduate programs two years later. Concordia University in Ann Arbor, also Lutheran‑affiliated, has sharply reduced its academic offerings and now runs only three on‑campus doctoral programs and several online education degrees.
“When you have those things that happen and you have increasing expenses, then you have to find the money to keep going somewhere and many times that involves increasing your debt load,” Timothy Pinnow, then-president of Finlandia, told Bridge at the time.
Siena Heights attempted an “honorable closing.” It added a compressed January term so seniors could complete credits, and staff worked with underclassmen to arrange transfers. But the strain showed in Mattson’s nursing program. “The school’s nursing department was reduced to three faculty members by the end of the semester, down from at least seven,” he said.
Mattson, who earned a Bachelor of Science in nursing, said the reality of the closure had not yet set in. “The school is still technically there, even if it is closed,” he said. “I think it will take a month or two for it to set in.”
The wave of closures is being driven by a demographic reality: Michigan is graduating roughly 8,000 fewer high-school students each year than it did 15 years ago, a decline that hits small private schools hardest. Marygrove College, in its closure announcement, stated bluntly that “the high school population dwindled such that all colleges and universities were competing for the same smaller number of students.”
Douglas B. Palmer, who stepped down as Siena Heights president in September, said in a statement, “The spirit of Siena Heights will continue long after the institution itself closes its doors because it lives in every graduate, faculty member and staff person who has been on campus – whether in‑person or online.”