<p>Does anyone have an explanation as to why Antioch had such a large drop in enrollment from the 60s to current time?</p>
<p>In the 1960s the Baby Boom was getting to be of college age, and males of that age went to college to defer being drafted. A decline in college enrollments that killed off a lot of small liberal arts colleges began in the late 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s. Today, with the Echo Baby Boom students mostly of college-applying age, any college that isn't bouncing back from the enrollment decline of the 1980s must not have much of a draw for students.</p>
<p>Oh, and the claim of Loren Pope that there isn't a big drug culture there? BS.</p>
<p>I also think it has to do with what students want in a college. The idea of a liberal arts education is undergoing a slow decline. 1/4 of American students major in business! Even at LAC's economics is often the area with the most majors. Numerous posters on this site have named NYC Stern the top school in the country after Wharton. As the political climate has become increasingly conservative anything alternative has become either suspect or irrelevant. As an exile from the sixties, I think this is extremely sad too.</p>
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That's really shocking to me.
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<p>I'm not shocked. I tried to find their financial reports a while back and found absolutely no data on their website.</p>
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It's not clear from the article what is the underlying cause of the school's decline. Squandering the endowment through bad investments? Other things? Anybody know?
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<p>I don't know for sure, but they made a decision in the 1960s to expand to a number of Antioch University locations around the country....a decision that would mean a serious dilution of their per student endowment.</p>
<p>I'm guessing that the sharp decline in college age students throughout the 1970s put the college in a financial tailspin from which they never really recovered.</p>
<p>At a certain point, the financial situation becomes a vicious cycle with deteriorating facilities making it increasingly difficult to attract students, which in turn further erodes the revenue stream.</p>
<p>Harvard should bail them out.</p>
<p>I live in Ohio, and Antioch's reputation in-state was not good. The college was widely seen as a place for the offspring of hippies, fair or not. Antioch's reputation for "student activism" certainly didn't appeal to my sons, who were more interested in learning something than protesting something, and I'd venture a guess that most os their peers feel the same way.</p>
<p>What made Antioch unique brought about it's demise, IMO.</p>
<p>No worries. Hampshire, Bard, Bennington, and Evergreen State are still kicking.</p>
<p>This 1975 Time Magazine article lays out the beginning of the end at Antioch quite clearly:</p>
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Antioch's problems started in the mid-1960s when President James P. Dixon, a vigorously self-confident graduate of Antioch ('39) and Harvard Medical School ('43) who had run the college almost singlehanded for a decade, had an inspiration. He decided to form a "network" of 23 other Antioch "campuses" across the country and abroad, not only to serve poor and minority students, but also to provide more places in which to experiment with educational reforms. (For example, at Antioch West in San Francisco, students design most of their highly individualized program themselves; they also hire adjunct professors and even decide how much they will be paid.)</p>
<p>As a symbol that his primary concern was now the entire network, Dixon moved to a country estate four miles from Yellow Springs and took much of the school's endowment and administration with him. That left the main campus without a permanent head for two years, until Francis X. Shea, 48, former president of the Roman Catholic College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, was hired as chancellor last summer. A white-haired scholar of 19th and 20th century literature, Shea was appalled at what he found when he unpacked his bags in Yellow Springs: "The entire administration has levitated out of sight, departed, or become otherwise incapacitated or unavailable."
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<p>I know I catch a lot of grief for harping on financial reports and per student endowment, but I believe that looking at how a college manages its finances is critical to understanding its ability to sustain a quality educational environment. To me, being unable to find any reference to basic annual financial data or annual reports on a school's website is a HUGE red flag.</p>
<p>BTW, I also think significant growth strategies raise a huge red flag for the viability of liberal arts colleges. Excessive growth, not supported by corresponding endowment increases, almost always takes a financial toll on a liberal arts college -- sometimes recoverable (Haverford); sometimes not (Antioch) with a lot of shades of gray in between.</p>
<p>BTW, another school that shows similar warning signs (lack of financial information, attention-deficit disorder style growth schemes in multiple directions, etc.) is Bard College.</p>
<p>When I attended in the late 60s-early 70s, tour busses used to drive through campus so people could gawk at the hippes. The student strikes during that time seemed tohave an impact on enrollment in the years following. The satellite schools have mostly done really well and are money-makers, not drains. I got my Masters from Antioch-New England and it was a great program. Antioch-Yellow Springs would not be a good place for conventional preppy types, but it was a wonderful place for me.</p>
<p>interesteddad, I'm financially challenged and unable to competently assess a college's financial data even if I had access. If a small college with a slightly-lower-than-average per-student endowment has invested heavily in hedge funds, is that a danger sign?</p>
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The satellite schools have mostly done really well and are money-makers, not drains.
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<p>There were at least 23 satellite operations in 1975. There are now 5. Presumably many of those expansion efforts were not money makers! Expansion plans at the height of the baby boom in the 1960s were especially risky for colleges because the 1970s brought the double-whammy of declining enrollment and hyper-inflation. The 1970s brought many schools to the brink of disaster. Because of the multiplier effect of endowments over time, drawing down endowments in the 1970s had a lasting impact on the competitive position of those schools today.</p>
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If a small college with a slightly-lower-than-average per-student endowment has invested heavily in hedge funds, is that a danger sign?
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<p>I'm not an investment guy, so I have no idea. The key is whether a school's finances are "in equilibrium". In other words, what is the rate of spending from the endowment? Is the rate of spending such that the real value of the endowment (after inflation) is declining? The rule of thumb is that you would like to see your average annual spending from endowment in the 4% to 6% of total endowment range. Well-run colleges at or above the top end of that scale will invariably be looking at strategic plans to increase revenues and/or decrease expenditures. </p>
<p>Right now, the huge pressure on colleges is the rapid increase in financial aid discounting (both need-based and merit-based). Basically, colleges are reaching the point where the market is increasingly balking at the price. The increasing financial aid discounts are, for all intents and purposes, price reductions. That is an almost universal pressure and most colleges are being quite responsible in their financial planning -- often intentionally reducing their enrollment to bolster their per student endowments and reduce their total financial aid.</p>
<p>The colleges that are headed for trouble are schools that are not "in equilibrium" and are seeing unintentional enrollment declines. Randolph Macon Women's College is an example of a school that simply could not attract enough students and responded to protect their endowment by going coed.</p>
<p>According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Antioch's 125 incoming freshmen would have brought the total fall enrollment to 300. Basically, they are going out of business because they don't have any students.</p>
<p>The reason it's shocking to me is not naivite but just a sense of Antioch's place in higher ed history.</p>
<p>{puts on irritated alum hat} And damnit, I know it's long-gone now, but let's get the name correct. It is (or shall we say WAS) "Randolph-Macon Woman's College." And I don't think it was matter of "simply" being unable to attract students. There are some management issues which did not help (i.e. the amount of administrative staff at the college, the incredibly high rate of pay of the president, etc).</p>
<p>Antioch tended to attract idealistic young people. A high percentage did go on to graduate/professional schools, but i'm betting the lawyers are mostly doing legal aid work, etc. Not too many big earners to grow the endowment.</p>
<p>And I'm not surprised it has a bad rep in Ohio, the state where the National Guard thought it was just fine to kill student protesters at Kent State.</p>
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The reason it's shocking to me is not naivite but just a sense of Antioch's place in higher ed history.
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<p>I agree with that. What first caught my eye about Antioch was when I was playing around with the per capita PhD production. They were in the upper echelon historically and then disappeared off the face of the earth in PhD production in the most recent decades.</p>
<p>BTW, I don't agree that it was the "hippie" thing. There are many colleges with an "alternative" reputation that seem to be doing just fine. Earlham is one example in the midwest. If anything, I think having a differentiated "brand" is probably a plus in a very crowded marketplace.</p>
<p>Sorry for getting RMWC's name wrong! The point I was making is that RMWC's decision doesn't appear to be fundamentally financial. They have a sizeable endowment that would give them a stable base were it not for the inability to stop the declining enrollment. In other words, they were going to run out of students long before they ran out of money. RMWC's situation is category specific: the collapse of demand for single-sex colleges.</p>
<p>It's hard to run colleges effectively, private or public ones. It could be that Antioch was done in by a combination of changing lifestyles and poor administration. It wouldn't be the first college to suffer such a fate. About 25 years ago University of Denver was so bad off, it was in danger of shutting down, unable to attract/keep faculty and unable to weather one of the worst economic downturns in recent state history. Today, it's a thriving, endowed school with a rising academic reputation. The key to its success was dynamic, shrewd leadership, renewed ties to the business community & the state's financial/philanthropic elites as well as marketing, marketing and more marketing. The same may have worked for Antioch -- clearly the will/talent to keep it going wasn't there, probably for a variety of reasons.</p>
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It wouldn't be the first college to suffer such a fate.
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<p>It won't be the last, either. I suspect that we'll see a lot of private college and university failures over the next decade or so. All but a few hundred schools are dependent on tuition revenues for substantially all of their operating budgets. As the echo boom subsides and the marekt demographics shift away from the traditional customer base, many schools will face heavy pressure. The rapid increase in tuition discounting is a harbinger.</p>
<p>Liberal arts colleges will be especially challenged because many of them are already operating at or near critical mass enrollment. If you have 4000 students, you can take an enrollment hit and figure out ways to prune operating expense accordingly (faculty layoffs, etc.). But, if you are at 800 students and start seeing significant enrollment declines, things get dicey very quickly with no easy pruning options.</p>
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I also think it has to do with what students want in a college. The idea of a liberal arts education is undergoing a slow decline. 1/4 of American students major in business! Even at LAC's economics is often the area with the most majors. Numerous posters on this site have named NYC Stern the top school in the country after Wharton. As the political climate has become increasingly conservative anything alternative has become either suspect or irrelevant. As an exile from the sixties, I think this is extremely sad too.
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<p>One might have a hard time reconciling the slow decline of a liberal arts education with the explosion in the number of applications at the highly competitive LAC's. Ask I-dad about the application numbers at Swarthmore from 2003! </p>
<p>And, fwiw, I'm not too sure about the increasingly conservative political climate, especially when it comes to academia. Of course, for liberals, a college where conservatives have a tiny whisper of a voice is considered a rarity that should be placed on the extinct list as soon as feasible.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I am not sure that you can conclude that interest in liberal arts is increasing because some top LACs and IVYs get more applications. First, top schools get more applications, in part, because of perceived job and grad school prospects.</p>
<p>A better indication would be to check out schools that aren't in the top 50 or so and see what majors students are gravitating to. IDad is quite right about the busineess emphasis at these other schools.</p>
<p>Even at LACs, kids tend to major in economics more than that of liberal arts. Take you as an example, aren't you majoring in economics and accounting?</p>
<p>If I had to guess at the reason I would say that everyone is trying to get an edge in today's competitive world. Attending a top school is perceived as automatically gaining an edge,whether or not this is realistically true. Majoring in some form of vocationally oriented major such as accounting, engineering,business etc, may be perceived as giving an edge to those students at schools with less name cache.</p>
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Even at LACs, kids tend to major in economics more than that of liberal arts.
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<p>Economics is one of the fields in a liberal arts education. It's always been one of the most popular majors at liberal arts colleges. It certainly was at Williams in the early 70s and it is today.</p>
<p>Same at Swarthmore. One of the top three majors today (it battles with Bio and Poli Sci). One of the top three majors 25 years ago. Looking at historic data, it appears that the only real change has been a possible softening of interest in Psych majors.</p>