<p>LOL, jnm. No, I’m not anticipating any dropping of pants or burgeoning coffers flowing over with expanded merit aid. I’d have to be delusional to think that the new economy would take us in that direction. I was referring rather to the coming contraction that will occur in (perhaps slowly or maybe a bit tumultuously, who knows?) as a result of new economic realities–and even more importantly–<em>downward demographic</em> pressures.</p>
<p>Two year old article about SM’s tuition autonomy and differential with College Park:</p>
<p>[St</a>. Mary?s College defends its tuition - College, Inc. - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/st-marys-college-defends-its-tuition/2011/07/12/gIQAI31fAI_blog.html]St”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/st-marys-college-defends-its-tuition/2011/07/12/gIQAI31fAI_blog.html)</p>
<p>Michael Barone and the Examiner’s views are more conservative than your average South Carolina pol :-). Nevertheless this was interesting:</p>
<p>[Michael</a> Barone: College bubble bursts after decades of extravagance | WashingtonExaminer.com](<a href=“http://washingtonexaminer.com/michael-barone-college-bubble-bursts-after-decades-of-extravagance/article/2529082]Michael”>Michael Barone: College bubble bursts after decades of extravagance | Washington Examiner)</p>
<p>This is actually a good thing, g-bird, for those entering into the college section realm in the next few years. Just like most things cyclical, we are entering a buyer’s market for colleges, but mostly focused on the non-prestigious privates. Negotiation skills will be key, not only with said schools but also with your own offspring, who will still want the name schools without enough value.</p>
<p>What do you guys foresee happening here?</p>
<p>I can’t figure out how this “goes.” Clearly many schools are very overpriced. But, they also seem to “need” the money to operate.</p>
<p>Will they trim back, figure it out, or will they end up folding?</p>
<p>I can’t see how this goes. I wonder if anybody else has any vision on this.</p>
<p>Marylander here. I’ve visited St. Mary’s several times and know numerous kids who have attended. I think it’s a great small school but not for everyone, in part because of the remote location and limited selection of majors. One of my daughter’s best friends is transferring out after freshman year, likely headed for U-Md. In her class, the overwhelming choice for in-state kids with 1900-plus SATs was College Park. Tough competition for St. Mary’s.</p>
<p>Well, poetgrl, the pace of this systemic change in college costs will depend partially on the health of the economy, which in my opinion is still on life-support, despite a 15,000 Dow. If it gets worse, even a good number of previously untouched colleges could become vulnerable to declining enrollment & financial troubles.</p>
<p>Personally, I think the cat’s out of the bag and the overall health of institutes of higher education will never again reach the peak of when…2000? 2005? That was when things were good, college consultants were de rigueur & one thought nothing of spending $45-50K/year on one child’s college education. We would just take a home equity loan out on our $400K property with $200K equity that was soon to be worth $600,000. No problemo.</p>
<p>Add to that the declining value of a BA in whatever major, and suddenly trade schools and community colleges start looking pretty darn good. Parents are watching their dinero, folks. Loans are BAD these days. Most of us on CC didn’t think that way 7-8 years ago.</p>
<p>It’ll be interesting, no doubt.</p>
<p>In answer to poet’s question, i think the smaller colleges that do it well and by well I think: have kept their tuition costs in line, have an environment that appeals to their constituents, produce grads that are well thought of in their region and have happy alumni who loved and contribute to their college will thrive. None of this will be dependent on the college’s ranking. Personally I’ve always thought yield was a super important number for the small colleges. It doesn’t matter how many kids you get to apply, if you can’t get them to attend you got problems and you’re either going after and accepting the wrong kids AND you deep discount yourself to get the ones you do. It’s like finding a rhythm…the colleges who found a rhythm, figured out who would accept and found kids that would be willing to pay a sustainable tuition and THEN turn around and produce kids who interview well, have gotten the well rounded education and get hired, then turn around and remember their college fondly. Sounds like the 50s and 60s and 70s doesn’t it? </p>
<p>Frankly that can’t be said about every small college and frankly there are plenty of regional strongholds that are doing the job. I don’t know what happened to St. Mary’s but I suspect they over promised and reached too high for kids and under delivered and over charged and over discounted.</p>
<p>I just quick googled St. Mary’s yield rate and it was 35%…Lake Forest was 50%, St. Olafs 53% etc. etc. There’s plenty we can put up with lower yields, but i used these as illustrative.</p>
<p>I think those yield numbers are off. Few LACs have yield rates near or over 50%.</p>
<p>IPEDs gives a yield rate (percent admitted who enrolled) as 36% for St Olaf and 21% for Lake Forest. St. Mary’s is 30%.</p>
<p>Williams has a yield rate of 45%.</p>
<p>That 30% yield rate for St Mary’s isn’t that bad, but of course it isn’t holding up this year.</p>
<p>Note that this is a public school.</p>
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<p>Sorry, I just grabbed some yield numbers, but let us supposed 30% is the threshold (and I trust ipeds). </p>
<p>I don’t think it matters…the size is what is important. The infrastructure costs associated with a small college aren’t going to be all that different from private to public. You have to house, feed and teach around 2,000 students plus or minus. One would think that if it is public it has some nominal taxpayer dollars associated that the privates don’t even have, a public LAC should be able to do better cost-wise than a private.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse wrote; “The reality is that the number of college aged kids going off to college from hs has gone down drastically in the last 5 years, and this is going to hit some schools very hard.”</p>
<p>The biggest part of that reality is that those of us in the Baby Boom generation had largely finished spawning by the early 1990s , completing our life cycles. Things could be lean for a number of years for many colleges until our grandchildren reach college age and another bulge works its way through the system.</p>
<p>We’ve already seen the decline in our school system working its way through. Colleges will have to manage the cyclical changes.</p>
<p>We are like the cicadas… except I, for one, do not have red eyes.</p>
<p>They all ready seem to be filling the classes with international students to close the gap. Many of whom are full pay. I think I saw figures in articles related to the Boston bombing that said 2012 was a record year of internationals in U.S. Universities.</p>
<p>There’s no shortage of college ready kids if you factor in all the pent-up demand overseas for American college education. I expect some of these smaller schools to be acquired by foreign universities or investors, like Salem in West Virginia.</p>
<p>Ditto I agree with Some Old Guy. Everyone in the world wants to go to school in the U.S. and they is not going to change.</p>
<p>I appreciate hearing all the ideas on here.</p>
<p>I really can’t figure out what is going to happen.</p>
<p>Late to the party here, but I found it described as small, rural school. Most kids seem to want either an urban (maybe suburban) school, or at least a medium size school.</p>
<p>Not every kid wants a city… look at Grinnell or Kenyon students. And it really is quite lovely, set on a river. As I said before, it has almost a summer camp feel. I think this college will figure it out, it does have some good things going for it. There are a lot more colleges we have visited (visited 40 between our 2 kids!) that are more likely to go under than this one. I noticed a couple others on the “space available” list this year that we have visited that I suspect are in more trouble than St. Mary’s because they have less going for them overall as schools.</p>