Over the last couple of weeks, there have been a handful of stories in the national media  discussing the death spiral of higher education,  and Ashland University has been mentioned in every one.

Just last week, the Plain Dealer in Cleveland published a story titled “College of Wooster succeeds while Ashland University struggles, according to published reports.”

A story on Bloomberg.com, which is associated with Business Week, published a story in the same week titled “Small U.S. Colleges Battle Death Spiral as Enrollment Drops.” Ashland was mentioned both because of its recent decision to cut tuition and because of Moody’s Investment Services decision to downgrade Ashland’s credit rating back in November.

Also in the same week, Slate, a national news website that is owned by the Washington Post, published a column titled “Small Private Colleges are in Deep Trouble (as they Should Be).” That column argues that universities have put themselves in this position by charging too much for services that aren’t worth the cost. He uses Ashland University as an example

“For the moment, forget about elite schools like Amherst or Wesleyan (they’re doing fine, anyway),” says the author Jordon Weissmann. “Instead, consider places like Ashland University in Ohio, which Moody›s has called a default risk. These institutions often cater to iffy students and produce mediocre graduation rates. But because they don’t have much in the way of endowments, they tend to charge high tuition, and leave undergraduates saddled with debts that simply might not be worthwhile.”

For the record, Ashland’s graduation rate is 61 percent, and our endowment, according to the 2012 IRS 990 form, stands at $31.2 million, down more than $2 million from 2008. For perspective, Baldwin Wallace’s endowment in the same time frame grew from $83.4 million to $99.3 million.

In March the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article  titled “Financially Strapped Colleges Grow More Vulnerable as Economic Recovery Lags.”

When you click on the link to that story, the first thing you see is the Dwight Schar Athletic Complex and the entrance to Jack Miller Stadium.

So why is Ashland being singled out when there are many other universities also facing financial peril? There is one common thread that all of these stories mention. It’s the fact that Moody’s downgraded our credit rating from B3 to Caa2. According to the Ashland Times Gazette, that’s one of the lowest credit ratings for private universities in the country

When the downgrade happened, President Fred Finks was quick to downplay it. He said it didn’t matter. That nobody paid attention to Moody’s anyway.

“Moody’s can tell you all they want,” Finks said in an interview on AUTV-20, adding that the day after the report came out, Richland Bank signed a long-term agreement with the university, extending a line of credit. Finks also said Huntington Bank had reached out and committed to working with AU.

“People in our area know our situation, they know what is going on,” he said in the interview. “I’m not as worried about Moody’s as a lot of people are.”

What that comment shows is that President Finks has drastically underestimated the public relations impact of the downgrade If there is one thing the downgrade did, it was to insure that Ashland University would be featured in virtually every single national story about struggling private universities for at least a year, probably longer.

That’s the way reporters work. They have a story idea — that private universities are in financial trouble, say — and the first place they go for research is to a financial institution that rates private universities. One of the first things they’re going to see, once they start digging, is Ashland’s recent downgrade to near junk bond status. It doesn’t matter that Moody’s is only rating $33 million of Ashland’s more than $114 million in total liabilities (again, according to the 2012 IRS 990 form). It doesn’t matter that local banks are still working with us.

This is what matters: The national media are going to write stories about private universities and their imminent demise, and they’re going to use Ashland University as the example of that. And AU must respond. AU must return calls seeking comment.

AU officials talked to the Chronicle of Higher Education for their story, but didn’t return calls seeking comment in the Bloomberg story. Nobody from AU commented in the Slate or even the Plain Dealer stories. Maybe they weren’t contacted. That’s entirely plausible. But when an organization like Bloomberg calls, we must comment. We must tell them our undergraduate enrollment looks to be growing thanks to the tuition reset. We must tell them we have a new online criminal justice program that seems to be doing well. We must tell them what we’re going to do to improve our financial standing.

We have to look like we know what we’re doing. Otherwise the stories, they’ll just keep coming, and Ashland University will forever be the poster child for academic failure.

Matt Tullis is the adviser to The Collegian. The newspaper reserves space for faculty columns on all topics.