The death nail to UA was struck around 2013. The U was already in a precarious financial position; but around that time the Ohio Legislature pushed out tougher commands on the 6-year retention rate. What made these changes especially difficult on The University of Akron was the "part-time" students and "Summit-College" students. As both counted against the 6-year retention rate at the time. Summit-College was performing the service of a Community College, where students were admitted to The University of Akron where they normally would not have been, and counted against the 6-year retention rate. Stark State seems to be moving in to cash in on the void left by UA's phase-out of Summit College as it was back then. Basically the State of Ohio forced UA to give up that vital part of revenue/service to the community that it had served as for decades and now others are moving in to siphon it off.
I remember vividly one of my last years on campus when we played the University of Tennessee (where my cousin went to school) I looked up the enrollments of the two schools. UA had a total enrollment greater than that of the University of Tennessee (Ours was about 30,000 theirs was about 28,000).
At UA you can clearly see the steepest reduction is in "Pre-Major" and "Associate Degree" programs which would have been mostly serviced by Summit College; followed up by Master's programs which is likely in the overall deduction of programs at UA. You can see the steepest drop in any category at any one time is "Associate Degree" from 2013-2014 which is a reduction of 1,200 in one year...which was most likely a good portion of your Summit College population.
I would have gone to UA for my Master's, and given them my money...except they've cut all the programs I could possibly use in my career (for those who were trying to understand the outrage over cutting programs)...and now all of my graduate $ are going to other institutions when I would have preferred to go with my Alma Mater if the option were there.
At any rate...it's obvious that there needs to be a steep reduction in the cost of athletics. UA's financial woes have been both self-inflicted, short-sidedness from past decadent leadership; and unrelenting pressure from the State not considering UA's unique position of being a Major University and a Community college at the same time.