UMaine System reducing physical footprint in face of online learning and declining enrollment

Frederick Hutchinson Center in Belfast, a building previously used by the University of Maine for classes that served a mix of undergraduate and non-traditional students. (Courtesy of Samantha Warren/ UMaine System)

The University of Maine System is selling a midcoast educational center that has been devoid of degree-seeking students since 2020. With this sale, the system is continuing to reduce its physical footprint as students shift to online courses amid a system-wide enrollment decline.

At a Monday meeting in Orono, the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to allow UMaine to sell the Frederick Hutchinson Center in Belfast, a building previously used for classes that served a mix of undergraduate and non-traditional students who worked for employers in the area, such as Bank of America.

However, due to those employers reducing their workforce, the university lost a large part of their non-traditional working student enrollment at the Belfast center, resulting in a steep decline in students from 16,000 in 2005 to 300 students in 2019, according to Samantha Warren, spokesperson for the system.

This year alone, the trustees have approved the sale of eight system-owned buildings and land amounting to more than 100 acres in Bangor, Houlton, Portland and Presque Isle, as fewer students use physical campuses in some parts of the state. UMaine students are now earning a third of all credit hours online, according to a news release.

The System sought to sell the Hutchinson center after years of no in-person classes and failed attempts to revive facility rentals, Warren said.

Although local circumstances drove the sale of the Belfast center, systemwide, Maine’s public universities have seen an 11 percent drop in undergraduate enrollment from the 2019-20 to the 2023-24 school year. At the same time, graduate student and law school enrollment increased, resulting in a total decline of five percent in as many years.

“Because of the shift in modality, the utilization of our classrooms is down much more dramatically. Dramatically more than enrollment is down,” Warren said.

Both the enrollment decrease and the shift to online education is consistent with national trends, only exacerbated in Maine by an aging population and declining high school graduation rates.

To accommodate these challenges, the university system plans to “achieve fiscal and energy efficiencies through physical space reduction,” according to its five-year strategic plan. That includes getting rid of low-use buildings such as the Hutchinson Center.

Because of a drop in tuition revenue and lack of use, the University of Maine at Presque Isle sold its Houlton Higher Education Center last month to a local nonprofit, and earlier this year, the University of Maine at Augusta sold four undeveloped acres to BangorHousing for affordable housing development.

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