Five California colleges received "accreditation with warning" designations from WASC at its June 26 meeting. For Dominican in San Rafael, the formal tab includes a $2.6 million structural deficit and $3.1 million in lost federal grants — with a correction deadline of June 30, 2028.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges notified Dominican University of California on July 9 that it was placing the San Rafael school on "accreditation with warning" status — the result of a June 26 commission meeting that gives Dominican until June 30, 2028, to address what WASC called an ongoing threat to the institution's financial sustainability.

In a letter to Dominican president Nicola Pitchford, commission president A. Maria Toyoda wrote that the university "has experienced multiple years of declining enrollment and deteriorating finances resulting in ongoing operating deficits that endanger the financial sustainability of the institution," and was "relying on short-term fixes to address long-term financial problems." The gap between revenues and expenses has produced a $2.6 million structural deficit. The school also absorbed a $3.1 million loss in federal grant funding last year — a cut that followed Dominican's 2022 designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and, according to the East Bay Times, drew scrutiny from the second Trump administration.

Dominican is one of three Bay Area universities now carrying the warning. Pitchford acknowledged that the same June 26 meeting placed Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco under identical status — along with La Sierra University in Riverside and Jessup University in Rocklin, five California schools in all.

The Academy of Art warning carries its own local weight. The school operates buildings across SoMa and adjacent neighborhoods, giving its financial trajectory a streetscape legibility that a hilltop campus in Moraga doesn't share. South of Market recorded 30 eviction notices in the last 90 days and 912 311 service requests in the last seven days — pressure the neighborhood carries for its own reasons, but a backdrop against which any large institution's contraction would be felt.

Pitchford said Dominican's accreditation remains active through the warning period and that students' standing is unaffected. The university is pivoting toward healthcare-oriented career programs aligned with the Marin and Bay Area job market, and has intensified fundraising. "We know we are not in imminent danger of collapse," she told the East Bay Times. "But we do agree with the commission that we absolutely have to engineer change and do it now."

Trustee Mary Jane Burke, a former Marin County superintendent of schools, traced the enrollment pressure upstream: California's K–12 public schools enrolled roughly 75,000 fewer students this year than the previous year, part of a decade-long decline of approximately 429,000 students — a 7 percent drop statewide. Trustee Jamie Ferrare offered a harder reading, arguing the warning reflects federal pressure on accrediting agencies to discipline institutions perceived as politically liberal. "In essence, they're looking for colleges and universities to conform more to the views of the current administration," Ferrare told the East Bay Times.

What the commission is asking all three Bay Area schools to prove, by mid-2028, is that they can outlast the pressure. The campuses will be there when that deadline arrives; whether the institutions inside them are solvent is the question WASC has now put formally on the record.