Also consider well-endowed LACs with all grant no loan policies like Williams and Amherst.
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I assume you meant to direct this to the OP.
Yes - and as data points in a competent review setting (such as credit committees), they are helpful - because then those data points are viewed in context.
But over-simplified into a mashed letter grade hit-parade, that users tend to take as “absolute” ranking order, without regard to context, they are meaningless at best - but in reality grossly misleading.
We hear from parents ALL THE TIME who are mis-interpreting college data all the time. You can’t save them all.
Is MIT more dangerous than University of Maine? Is a college where kids drink to excess and fall off balconies “safer” than a college which abuts a mostly minority neighborhood which many CC posters believe is inherently unsafe? Is a college with a high number of crimes- student against student, including sexual assault, more dangerous than a college with a low number because the administration actively discourages women from reporting sexual assault or going to a hospital for a rape kit?
Is the ROI of a college where most kids get jobs directly after undergrad higher than one where a high percentage go on to grad school? Is it better for a pre-med to be a college where they’ll be in the top quartile of students (based on their HS stats) because they’ll “Stand out” or is it better to attend a college with a more rigorous cohort?
Many parents who post on CC get hold of two or three datapoints which support a deeply held belief (go to the “easiest” college you get into to make it “easier” to get into med school) whether or not a broader analysis suggests fallacious thinking.
I think parents don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) that at the end of the day, there are only two types of colleges (yes, I’m over=simplifying)- tuition dependent institutions, and non-tuition dependent. A tuition dependent institution needs to have experts managing their endowment ( big or small, understanding risk is VERY important) and is going to be extremely sensitive to even small wiggles in yield and enrollment, and will be EXTREMELY sensitive to shifts in their costs- whether from Covid remediation (all those plexi shields in the cafeteria), increases in electricity costs, inflation on food, increase in mandated minimum wage in their state, etc. The president needs to be an expert fundraiser, and the CFO needs to be top-notch.
A non-tuition dependent institution (bigger endowment, research dollars which flow in on a consistent basis, patents and royalties from professor’s inventions, non-educational revenue from owning and developing real estate, lots and lots of ancillary revenue from sports camps in the summer and executive education year round) still needs to worry about costs— but small wobbles in their projections aren’t going to lead to severe consequence. Your bio professors and med school researchers are working with a leading VC firm to commercialize some doo-dad they’ve cooked up to alter the genetics of Parkinson’s disease or diabetes? A 6% increase in your air conditioning bill won’t alter the future of your institution.
I wish parent would understand these bigger phenomena, rather than focusing on a letter grade which may or may not reflect the bigger picture.
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I actually pulled one school out of my eldest’s final group - Oglethorpe- because of their financial grade at the time(pre-pandemic); it was a D or an F and I thought they might fold or cause students to “lose” their scholarships to lower-than-required GPAs. I in no way regret my decision, but am happy to report that they now are at the top of Forbes rankings for biggest turnaround!
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Way to go Oglethorpe!
My D was accepted with a nice scholarship from Whittier. Have heard and read some things about their financial status that were not positive.
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In post #5 I shared some resources that could be useful in answering the questions about a college potentially closing. Tonight, thanks to @LionsTigersAndBears thread, I learned about another one that could be very useful to families.
Among other really interesting data points, this site will let you look at a school’s enrollment numbers over time as well as its assets and a year-by-year look of its revenue-expenses (avoid the red!).
For instance, these are the financial charts for Iowa Wesleyan, which recently announced that it was going to close:
This is the enrollment picture for Clarkson, one of the schools discussed upthread:
And here Clarkson’s financial info:
Here, although there’s been a decrease in enrollment, the university still looks financially stable (to my eyes, at least). That can definitely give peace of mind to families as they make their college decisions, particularly if the institution isn’t a Big Name.
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