La Salle warned accreditation could be in jeopardy

La Salle University has been warned by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that its accreditation might be in jeopardy regarding its compliance with planning, resources, and institutional advancement standards.

The school in Philadelphia’s Logan section must submit a report by Feb. 16 to show it “has achieved and can sustain ongoing compliance with documented financial resources, funding base, and plans for financial development, adequate to support its educational purposes and programs and to ensure financial stability,” Middle States, La Salle’s accreditor, said in a June 26 posting on its website.

La Salle, which had a total enrollment of 3,550 students last academic year, has faced financial challenges in recent years and plummeting undergraduate enrollment. That includes a 28% drop in overall headcount from 2019 to spring of 2024, though first-year enrollment rose substantially for the 2024-25 academic year.

» READ MORE: Financially Fragile: A look at the financial health of 13 small, private Philadelphia-area schools

The school was one of four local universities deemed in poor financial health in an Inquirer analysis published last fall, using a financial viability index developed by Julee Gard, a finance executive at a small college in Illinois. La Salle president Daniel J. Allen criticized the index as “too simplistic to even approach accuracy.”

La Salle is not the first local institution to receive such a warning, the least severe action Middle States assesses. Rosemont College, which has since announced it would phase out operations and merge into Villanova University in 2028, had received a warning in 2022, but cleared it a year later. Cheyney University, a historically Black state school, has received multiple warnings over the years; the school came off warning last summer and had its accreditation reaffirmed. Chestnut Hill College got a warning two years ago, but had its accreditation reaffirmed last summer.

Most recently, Bryn Athyn College of the New Church was warned in June that its accreditation may be in jeopardy.

A warning means the college appears to have the ability to make changes and meet standards and has “the capacity to sustain itself in the long term.” Schools maintain their accreditation in the warning phase; accreditation is crucial for colleges because it allows them to receive federal and state financial aid.

» READ MORE: La Salle University’s enrollment dropped 28% since 2019. What is the school doing to cope?

Allen, La Salle’s president, said in a campus message that La Salle officials are well aware of the financial challenges the school faces and are taking appropriate steps to address them.

But he also said he was surprised and disappointed by the warning, saying a Middle States team that visited campus earlier this year gave the school “a glowing report” and indicated that the school “appeared to meet all standards.”

Allen said the warning is particularly frustrating, given fall 2025 enrollment numbers “that are greatly exceeding our projections.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we are on the right path as a university,” Allen said.

» READ MORE: La Salle has a plan to attract more students: Revive baseball, add several women’s sports, start a band

The commission also said La Salle must show “organized and systematic assessments evaluating the extent of student achievement of institutional goals, including general education.”

In The Inquirer’s analysis last fall, La Salle had the biggest decline in net tuition revenue from 2015 to 2023. It fell even further in fiscal 2024, to $45 million, half what it was in 2015. La Salle also had experienced operating losses seven straight years.

To compensate, the school had been relying on what Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings had called elevated endowment spending, including several years of spending 8.6% of the endowment, The Inquirer found. A more typical rate is 5%.

In addition, it had received a BB- from S&P, indicating it “faces major ongoing uncertainties.”

A debt restructuring last year is allowing La Salle to temporarily conserve $24 million in cash by postponing some debt payments through fiscal 2028. That bought the college some time to turn things around.

La Salle officials told The Inquirer last year they were restructuring the academic enterprise, embracing the school’s smaller size, and building a more realistic budget. The school launched new academic programs, including a sports management major, and announced it was bringing back baseball, adding new sports for women, beefing up cheer and dance clubs, and starting a band.

Last fall the school told bondholders it had enrolled 507 freshmen, up 22% from the prior fall, and showed a 3-percentage-point jump in freshman-to-sophomore retention over the prior year.

Those positive trends are continuing, a college spokesperson said.

“We welcome the opportunity to understand the areas where the commission requires more information in order to promptly address them,” said La Salle spokesperson Brian Kirschner. “Through this process, we are eager to share with the commission the very positive momentum we are experiencing at La Salle, which includes enrollment that is greatly exceeding projections.”

The university declined to release those enrollment numbers until it’s closer to the fall semester.

Staff writer Harold Brubaker contributed to this article.