The school is ‘only’ 60 years old, so the number of alums giving big bucks is small. Some are just getting to retirement age and may be leaving some $$ to the school when they die? In the last year they had a lot of articles about the alums who worked on the Apollo program in the 60’s and they were all babies! Many of the buildings have been built in the last 20 years or so, so there are mortgages and bonds out on them. It focuses on expensive things to teach like engineering and science and needs lots of labs, computers, workshops, etc. Its grads often went in to government jobs and weren’t making millions. Engineers and astronauts make good money now but that wasn’t always the case. Good money, but not millions.
It has a lot of ‘current’ funding from the government and big aero business like NASA and Northrop Grumman, so professors get grants, students get co-ops and internships off those grants. If a $10m grant comes in, it doesn’t go to the endowment but is used up by the professors and students within a year or two and Forbes doesn’t count it in the grade as heavily as if it was $10M into the endowment.
Tuition is high with a lot of foreign students paying the full amount.
I was never worried about the D rating. They give generous merit aid. They have Buzz Aldrin who wants to give all his money to Florida Tech (but his children are trying to have him committed and have him lose control of his finances), the current president and his wife have donated a few million, the athletic teams seem to have enough money to keep going. They have a few wealthy people who sponsor programs, like Doug Flutie is on the board and raises money for the autism program and Tim Wakefield helps support baseball.
But yeah, it would be nice to have a Michael Bloomberg give millions.
Thanks @twoinanddone , that makes sense. Hope things work out okay for your Florida tech kid, I seem to recall she and her partner were left in limbo after corona scuppered his military deployment? You think you’ve launched them all and then suddenly the rockets start wobbling…
My Florida Tech kid is ‘stuck’ in Florida right now. She is transferring with her same company to Denver and it was supposed to happen in early May but is now put off until June. Her boyfriend is having a harder time interviewing etc. but they are both still employed and working from home in Florida.
My other daughter’s boyfriend is in Military Limbo, his reporting date change from March 30 to ??? (most likely August). She moved back to Wyoming and he moved home to his mother’s but had already quit his job. He’s working on his golf game.
@NJdad07090 The Boston archbshop now lives in the Cathedral rectory in the South End, a long way from Boston College. The archdiocesan offices are now located in suburban Braintree in a building donated by a wealthy Catholic real estate tycoon.
@TomSrOfBoston - Thanks for clearing that up, maybe I have to much faith in the church’s resources since we are debating a catholic collage, fairy small w enrollment in the 6,000 kid range and endowment in the sub 150 million range.
Hampshire College has a “C” grade on the Forbes Financial Health report, and they have been struggling financially for years. The situation got so bad that either this year or last year (can’t remember which), their regular decision acceptance rate was 0% and they only took the students for that class that applied early decision and were accepted. They have narrowly avoided losing their accreditation. Hampshire College’s outlook for the next five years was not good even before this whole COVID-19 fiasco; as unfortunate as it is, I would not be surprised if this did them in.
One thing Hampshire has going for it though is that they are part of the Five College Consortium, alongside Amherst College (where I am currently a student), Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and UMass, so maybe the other colleges could join together and offer them a bailout. Also, before this whole COVID-19 thing, I heard a rumor that there were unofficial talks of a deal between UMass and Hampshire by which Hampshire would remain a private entity but UMass would gain access to and control over all of their properties and facilities, in exchange for UMass providing Hampshire with financial support.
But, as others in the thread have already said, if “C” schools are doing this bad, how badly are “D” schools faring?
DS is trying to make a decision between University of Portland and University of Washington. Latest I could find was UP endowment at 140M with 4200 enrollment. UP seems to have an excellent reputation and DS is going to be doing AFROTC. Currently, UP will allow him to keep his initial Merit Scholarship of 30K and add that to his ROTC Scholarship of 18K. This covers the vast majority of tuition and fees. In addition, they also cover his room cost while under the ROTC scholarship. This leave us essentially just paying for board.
Obviously this is a great deal, but I am very concerned there will be significant changes to these policies due to CV. The safest bet may be to just go with UW and pay the higher room & board charges which may be a non-player if the 2020-21 school year is done online.
We have to decide by Friday and thoughts would be appreciated.
Regarding Hampshire, I understand that they have considered turning some of their large campus into a way to bring in cash. One idea they floated was to create senior living facility with a philosophy similar to that of Hampshire. In the Northampton area, that could be appealing.
We live in the Portland area and my daughter is possibly UW-bound in the fall of 2021 as she has another year of HS to go. I went to UW for grad school and undergrad her in Portland at a different school (Reed College). It has been awhile since I was over to the UP campus as it is in a very out-of-the-way corner of Portland. But I pay close attention to local media reporting on our local schools and UP has not been on any kind of radar for financial troubles. In fact, until CV they have been expanding.
My guess is that Reed, Lewis & Clark and UP are the three Portland-area privates that are on most sound footing. Concordia University just announced closure a couple of months ago which was a shock but it was a more sketchy operation that invested heavily in online education and could’t really compete with the bigger online schools like Western Governors because they were also trying to maintain a legacy campus. Concordia also got crosswise with it’s Lutheran sponsors who reportedly pulled the plug due to the campus getting out ahead of the church (Missouri Synod) on LGBT issues. Marylhurst University, another Catholic School in the Portland area collapsed and closed a couple of years ago. But it was a different sort of operation that expanded rapidly into non-traditional student education during the 2008 recession and couldn’t sustain their student body when the economy picked up steam. Some of the more exurban schools a bit further from Portland like Pacific University, George Fox and Linfield may also be on very shaky footing as they don’t have much national appeal and are a bit too far from Portland proper to be commuter schools.
So if I had to guess, when the music stops, Reed, Lewis & Clark and UP will be the last three local private schools still standing. UP and UW are really very different schools. UP usually competes more with Seattle U and Gonzaga as well as the California Catholics like Santa Clara. I would frankly pick the school he would rather attend and if worst comes to worst one can always transfer.
@nanosour I wouldn’t be too worried about the financial health of UP. With the nursing school, b school, and various other grad programs, plus not an over reliance on room and board charges, they should be able to weather the storm pretty well when compared to some of the ug focused small lacs that will be much more challenged if on campus learning can’t resume this fall. That’s not to say that there won’t be cutbacks but they aren’t at risk of going under in the near term. There will likely be cutbacks at UW also.
@Nanosour _ I think you should be fine w Portland , their endowment is ok and I think if the merit is for 4 years, they will cut one year grants before 4 year merit, and ROTC should not be cut so I think you will be fine, if it was my kid I would say go for it.
I suspect Akron isn’t going to be completely shutting down all the programs in the closed colleges—many if not most of them will be folded into the remaining colleges (polymer engineering into engineering is an obvious candidate), or colleges will be merged (arts & sciences with graduate arts & sciences, I’d expect).