Should We Believe Scott Galloway’s Predictions of Soon-to-Perish Colleges?
Excerpt from the response…
"In 2015, Sweet Briar College’s Board announced they would be closing that summer. They still had 80 million dollars in their endowment at the time. They had a beautiful campus in the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unfortunately, they did not want to co-educate, they were geographically isolated, and their enrollment numbers and yield rates were declining. None of these factors are a part of Galloway’s predictions.
However, when Sweet Briar made this announcement the alumni rose up in opposition and reversed the decision. The little women’s college still exists today, albeit still small and struggling financially. One of the lessons taught to me by a former mentor who just so happened to have served on the Board of Sweet Briar and had a hand in encouraging closure, is that it is almost impossible to kill a college. There are many examples of colleges that were expected to disappear (e.g. Antioch) that did not because there were alumni who would not let it happen.
I share this because one thing Scott Galloway may need to get credit for is that the shock he just gave several hundred universities may lead to a push for survival that would not have occurred without Galloway’s conjecture. In short, I predict the colleges on the “Perish” list are now going to take more urgent and informed steps to prevent their demise. They may be the lucky ones who just received a shot of the virus in the form of a vaccine that will ultimately strengthen them for the coming months. Let’s certainly hope so."
However, not all colleges have alumni (or other interested parties) devoted to the college enough to try to save it, as evidenced by the colleges that actually did close.
That is true. However, people are constantly ignoring the fact that there are over 2,000 non-profit 4-year colleges. The ones that are most likely to shut down are the ones who did not make it to Galloway’s list. Perhaps 5 colleges on his list will have to shut down. However, perhaps 200 will close, but those are colleges which he, and all the other researchers at “elite” colleges ignore.
He knows that hundreds of colleges could close, but, again, his bubble precludes him from actually considering any colleges which are not ranked by USNews or by Forbes. Colleges which are not mentioned in Princeton Review. Since he only looks at colleges like the 400 or so he lists, perhaps he feels the need to show why 100 of these colleges will close.
The colleges that close are small colleges, often religious colleges, in rural areas which have lost the pool from which they drew students. The students have either left with their families, or are no longer able to afford a private college, even a relatively cheap one. Small public directional colleges will also close, for the same reason. Some are small colleges in urban areas which are losing out to larger colleges which can provide better job prospects. Some of the smaller directional colleges may also close for the same reasons. The former reason is why Western Illinois University may close, and the latter reason is why Northeastern Illinois University may also close.
People who have been following the closing of colleges have a pretty good idea as to what the risk factors are for a college. Galloway waltzes in, decides that he can reinvent the wheel, produces a square, and calls it a wheel.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that he was a physicist.
Yes, @CC_Jon , this should (and has been) be a place for useful information related to all things college (especially important for those articles posted by CC staff) and if there is reliable information about some colleges that may not survive the pandemic (see the college closings thread), that can of course be helpful. But to potentially scare students away from schools that may not be at risk for closing, based on some opinion (its NOT a “report”, a descriptor which I see you have changed, which is a start) with possibly contrived data manipulating and adding insult to injury by giving it a clickbait title is not at all, IMO, in students’ best interests nor helpful to them in the way that this forum has been. JMO.
Is it a good idea to look at/consider a school’s financial soundness/solvency as a factor in the college application process? Sure it is. Is it a good idea to scare students with some “henny penny the sky is falling!” OMG these schools are “on the brink” of “perishing”(when they very well may not be)? IMO that is ill advised. And if reps from any of those schools post here, they may not be too pleased. Best to look at the big picture, IMO, FWIW. Thank you for a at least toning down the histrionic verbiage in the OP.
Galloway was recently interviewed by Andy Slavitt on Andy’s “In the Bubble” podcast. Slavitt was Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, from March 2015 to January 2017. As you might expect from his article, Galloway’s focus is on the business side of running a college or university. He even says he thinks that once Fall tuition is paid, more colleges will pivot and backtrack from having an in person experience. Galloway thinks a lot of what he considers “low value high tuition” colleges SHOULD permanently close because they are “selling a Hyundai for the price of a Mercedes.” He considers it an “overdue reckoning” and further that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” I think Galloway’s pre-existing opinion has definitely colored his analysis.
All schools except for elite 50 are challenged. Even President of Harvard w billion dollar endowment expressed fear and cutbacks. That said , Galloway is irresponsible in his marketing…he picks 434 schools out of 3,500. Oh, and let’s look at his 2017 prediction for cities…uhmm by july 2020 he seems way off the mark…
I would take the groupings with a huge grain of salt. While I agree that many schools are at high risk of closing, and that the work should be commended for taking a more systematic approach for predicting which schools will close, I suspect that the data or inputs used for this prediction is full of poor assumptions or junky info.
My neighborhood just lost our local university and now we have a beautiful campus with no students to utilize it. For me personally as a parent, I recommended to my daughter to only apply to schools with strong alumni support, strong endowment and strong enrollment. I did not want my daughter to be stuck in a situation where she could not be at one school for 4 years due to that university or college being at risk. This did lead her to mostly apply to very selective schools but it was a good return on her investment and our investment as her parents too.