‘According to college data, the percentage of students Hampshire admitted went from 70 percent in 2014 to 63 percent in 2015. Lash said his goal is to get the school’s admitted rate below 50 percent.’ Does this selectivity help when a school ‘depends heavily on tuition for operating expenses?’
‘A decision to drop use of standardized tests can be risky because it means Hampshire is not included in the popular US News & World Report college rankings.’ US News didn’t just penalize and drop them down the list like they did with Reed; they dropped Hampshire entirely. Maybe, like SLC, they’ll decide they have to go back to test-optional to get back on that essential and infallible list.
Grrrr. USN&WR. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Ouch. Being more selective meant not just filling each slot with a student. Still, probably Hampshire’s yield (% of accepted students who actually enroll) was lower than expected, leading to the unusually high number of unfilled seats. It also sounds like they experienced a higher than expected drop-out/transfer rate. I hope they turn it around.
Did Hampshire’s rank in USN&WR really help that much? My recollection is that they were ranked around #100 among liberal arts colleges.
According to the Hampshire Gazette (http://www.gazettenet.com/Hampshire-College-patches-$2-6-million-budget-gap-resulting-from-enrollment-shortfall-4450630), the 2014 yield was 19%, which rose to 27% in 2015, but fell to 24% this year.
If you read the entire article, there is another issue that has been identified. While Hampshire is known for its activist student body, my view as a parent of a current student is that the level really got out of hand last spring. The administration canceled classes for a day during the final weeks of the semester to hear out students who did not think faculty and administrators were paying enough attention to issues of race on campus. This may (or may not) be the case - I don’t know. What I do know is that my son dreaded going to his social science class because it devolved into student shouting matches that the professor refused to bring under control. Activism is great until it infringes on other students’ ability to learn. The Globe article named this as a factor in both transfers and yield this year.
just to put in a counter perspective, i know a current hampshire student who is excited about returning to her third year. It’s not all bad news by any measure.
I don’t think it is all bad news either. The new Kern center is being dedicated this month. Hampshire is going solar. My son has some excellent classes lined up after finishing the first-year requirements.
I do think that while Jonathan Lash was out of commission after surgery in this past spring, the acting president was in way over her head.
Assuming college choice is elastic based on cost, this might account for the drop in yield. Even worse, it will have a super-linear effect as two things will happen:
- without merit, a smaller percentage of more valuable higher-paying kids attend.
- a higher proportion of of less valuable financial aid kids attend.
So it costs a university with effectively no endowment more to have the kids in group #2 attend and they chase away kids in group #1 who would help cover others. This is an F in Enrollment Management 101 and it’s clear remedial economics and math classes are the prescription.
There is still merit aid.
Snowdog, are you sure there is still merit aid? I thought not. Hope I’m wrong.
@colgrlma, my son has a small Hampshire academic award, which renews every year - that’s what I am referring to as merit aid.
But that could be because he is under the old policy. Is there still merit aid for incoming freshman is the question?
“Hampshire offers several merit-based and matching scholarships. Renewable annual merit scholarships up to $10,000. All merit-based scholarships are awarded by the admissions committee, with no separate application required.” https://www.hampshire.edu/admissions/merit-scholarships
According to Jonathan Lash, who recently wrote an article in The Hechinger Report (http://hechingerreport.org/why-do-schools-use-grades-that-teach-nothing/):
“Retention of first-year students is again higher than it was before the policy change (to no longer accept standardized tests for admission), 81 percent as opposed to 78 percent two years ago. Our “yield” percentage of students who accepted the college’s offer of admission is again higher than in the years before the policy change.”
If first-year student retention is slightly higher, and the yield was higher as well, then perhaps more students are transferring out after their second year? Otherwise, I’m not sure why there would be an enrollment drop.
The article mostly addresses Hampshire’s oft-stated position that narrative evaluations are superior to letter grades, something that seems obvious to me. Still, you sure don’t see many colleges doing it.
I’ll give Jonathan Lash an ‘A’ for effort!
I think it takes more than one year for the adcoms to sort out the yield equation after a major admissions criteria change. When USC (where another of our kids attended) first went to the common app 4 years ago, yield was off for at least a year until they figured out how many more students they needed to accept under the new application.
Excellent news. The market speaks. I suspect their final woes will worsen now.
Kind of sad to me that individuals here would be rooting for a college to fail. Why? Because it is a liberal institution? Because they chose to not fly the American flag for a couple of weeks (BTW, it is flying right now)?
62K per year (tuition/room/board). Budget deficit of 2.6 mil this year, yet the school Is focused on not flying the American flag?
Nero fiddled . . .
@uclapack Hampshire isn’t focused on not flying the flag. The President of the college merely addressed the issue. Similar protests are going on at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and UC Berkeley. Not unique.