US university, college towns face dual threat

In Hickory, North Carolina－home to Lenoir-Rhyne University and Catawba Valley Community College－local sales tax revenue has fallen by $100,000 a month and 28 employees have been furloughed.

Schools are absorbing the financial impact of students leaving in the spring.

Last year, cities with higher education institutions were forecast to see an 11 percent rise in employment, according to a report by McKinsey &Co. Instead, schools hit by COVID-19 are cutting jobs.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that according to the US Labor Department in May, the number of people employed in higher education in the country fell by 19,200 in February and March.

Some schools are freezing salaries, but are hiring. Ohio University has announced layoffs, while at the University of Wisconsin, most of the 3,500 employees will be furloughed for six to eight days during the next five months.

The University of Tennessee in Knoxville has paid $15 million in refunds to students, while Clemson University in South Carolina has told its board of trustees it could lose up to $100 million if classes are held online in the fall. However, it will still hold in-class instruction.

The University of Michigan is predicting pandemic-related losses of as much as $1 billion across its three campuses by the end of this year. The school's medical workers have been furloughed and construction of a new hospital halted.

Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman's, a delicatessen company with a number of outlets in Ann Arbor, said he has furloughed nearly 450 of 700 employees, and estimates that sales have fallen by 50 percent of the level since the onset of the pandemic.

"It's only going to get worse because nobody, not even really the school, knows how many students will come back," Weinzweig told the The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization.

Another cause for concern is the national census, which every decade determines the number of seats each state has in the House of Representatives and the amount of federal funding distributed to local and state governments.

College towns reported significant undercounting, as students were leaving campuses when the census was being carried out.

Students at Ohio University comprise 75 percent of the local population, so excluding them from the census could result in the official headcount being slashed from 24,000 to 6,000.

In Ithaca, a remote college town, 50 percent of the population consists of students－meaning that if they are not counted, the figure could shrink from 31,000 to 15,500.