As far as I know, Clarkson is, too.
Berklee College of Music and The Boston Conservatory merged in 2016.
That list also has an entry for The Boston Conservatory.
So it’s really a list of colleges that have ceased to exist in their previous forms since 2016, even if they’ve survived in an altered form.
Yes, the headline is misleading, The narrative introduction says this: “We’re keeping track of major college and university closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation from 2016 to the present.”
And all the Connecticut community colleges are merging. I guess this is more of a close/merger list.
A bit more from Southern Vermont College:
President of UMass Marty Meehan spent a fair amount of time talking about the northeast being ground zero for closures in his state of UMass address today. And, that they are going after the online adult learner aggressively. It’s clearly that the only way to grow enrollment is to go after returning adults and growing demos like Latinx students.
The following is a link to a more in-depth, 3-5-19 Inside Higher Ed article about the closing of Southern Vermont College:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/05/southern-vermont-college-says-it-will-shut-its-doors
I just looked it up—Southern Vermont College’s endowment (as of 2017, so before this past year) was only $3.1M.
I’m starting to think that if you’re a New England private college with an endowment below $20M (probably actually below $50M), you need to start planning for an orderly windup now, and be honest about it.
At region’s smallest colleges, poor graduation rates threaten their financial stability
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/05/region-smallest-colleges-poor-graduation-rates-threaten-their-financial-stability/wEMtFJG7q7jGUfUmwZAklL/story.html
“Desperate to fill their slots, some schools lower their admissions criteria and waive standardized testing requirements. But they often lack the resources to bring these sometimes ill-prepared students up to speed.”
Alternative Colleges, and Their ‘Radical, Communal Ideas,’ Fight for a Future
Experimental schools like Hampshire College were once the cutting edge of academia. Now they’re struggling to stay open.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/us/college-enrollment.html
From the NYTimes article about Hampshire “tuition, room and board at Hampshire College is more than $63,000 a year, which is typical for elite private colleges. (Many of the 1,100 or so Hampshire students, down from 1,400 five years ago, receive significant financial aid.) In 1970, tuition, room and board at private four-year colleges and universities was about $3,000 a year — about $20,000, adjusted for inflation — according to federal statistics.”
It would be great if Green Mountain or Hampshire could be rescued by a consortium of billionaire donors and model themselves after Berea College in Kentucky. It would serve that part of the rural northeast well.
Mr. Rowan was a graduate of MIT and donated millions to Rowan University in NJ because he felt that part of NJ was not well served by higher ed at the time. I wish more billionaires had that kind of foresight. To its credit, the administration of Rowan built up a respectable engineering program from scratch, and this has benefited the entire university, especially the math and science departments.
@momprof9904 Donating $100 million to establish an engineering school is one thing. Donating to salvage a failing alternative college is something else.
What I find ridiculous is some people with money who donate large sums to places like Princeton, Yale or Harvard which are swimming in money instead of giving it some deserving small college or university. Rowan University used to be Keene (sp?) College if I’m not mistaken. This seems to be a success story, money well spent.
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@TomSrOfBoston Well, if there was such a donation, the college would have to model itself after something successful, like Berea College. Given what I know of higher ed, though, success often proves elusive. So I sort of get why donors choose to donate to already wealthy colleges, although I also think it’s a bit ridiculous.
Rowan used to be Glassboro State. Keene State College is in New Hampshire, and Kean University is in NJ.
Honestly, I think many small colleges are simply beyond saving. The era when families were willing to spend that kind of money on all but the best colleges is coming to an end. I find it unconscionable that tuition has risen so much faster than inflation. It was unsustainable and its crashing now. In the fairly affluent NY suburb where we live, nearly everyone is hunting for deals for college. Unless the child gets into Harvard or something equivalent, nearly everyone is look for public or significant merit. Most tiny, lower ranked colleges simply can’t compete.
https://www.rowan.edu/home/about/our-past-present-future/rowan-history
1923 Glassboro Normal School
1958 Glassboro State College
1992 Rowan College of New Jersey
1997 Rowan University
Is it ridiculous to give to the Metropolitan Opera instead of your local community opera company? Is it ridiculous to give to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts instead of a small and struggling historical society? Is it ridiculous to give to Sloan Kettering instead of your local chemo center?
Donors have criteria for giving- and often, the below scale, poorly managed institutions- as wonderful as their intentions might be- don’t meet the criteria. If I owned a Rembrandt, I wouldn’t be looking to give it to a museum which couldn’t afford appropriate climate control, security, pest management, and insurance. I’d be looking at the big institutions who can properly care for the work for generations to come. Sloan Kettering gets donations because people around the world recognize that they do ground-breaking research on multiple fronts for a wide range of cancers. Your local chemo center may have one clinical trial per year focused on lung cancer- that’s not much help to thousands of people who will die of breast or ovarian cancer this year.
Lemon Drop- people give to established institutions because they are doing work that the donor wants to support, and they have proven that they can appropriately manage their endowments, resources, physical plant, etc. Donors don’t want to give to institutions which are already on shaky ground because why throw good money after bad?