According to the linked article, Ashford was a for-profit fully-online university that was attempting to convert to non-profit status.
[quote=“Snowball_City, post:19, topic:1883690”]
What I did was look at endowments as a proxy- total endowment and per student $.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment
It is said that some tests are going to be done only online. It causes a lot of pressure for students, even if it more convenient. We are looking for having preparation for my daughter with tests and not sure which one to take next year’s SAT of ACT. I fount tons of information like http://www.test-done.com/, what is the difference if the college we want accept both.
The University of Vermont is shrinking down a bit, closing 12 majors (out of 56) and 11 minors (out of 63) plus 4 masters programs (out of 10) in the arts and sciences.
Source: UVM to eliminate 23 programs in the College of Arts and Sciences - VTDigger
(I have been unable to find a full list of the closures—it feels like each source lists a few of them, but somewhere there’s got to be a comprehensive list, right?)
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Here in NC, Guilford College is cutting nearly a third of its faculty and half its majors.
And some of the majors being cut are core to either the arts and sciences generally (e.g., philosophy, physics) or to Guilford’s historical mission (e.g., peace studies). Those are the kinds of cuts that have a solid chance of resulting in a pretty quick death spiral.
Guilford College is host (? not sure that’s the right word) to what is arguably our best public high school in the state, the Early College at Guilford. I wonder how this impacts them.
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The majors being cut at Guilford and their recent bachelor’s graduates from
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=guilford&s=all&id=198613#programs
3 math
6 political science
5 history
3 philosophy
4 geology
5 economics
2 peace and conflict studies
3 chemistry
3 religious studies
1 physics
4 creative writing
5 sociology/anthropology
7? forensic biology
26? community and justice studies
5 all modern languages (0 French, 5 German, 0 Spanish)
Largest majors at Guilford:
26 psychology
26 criminal justice
25 business administration
19 health and physical education
16 accounting
16 sports and fitness administration/management
15 community organization and advocacy
14 biological sciences
13 computer and information sciences
13 English language and literature
10 fine and studio arts
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Concordia college in New York closing this summer. Iona will takeover the campus
Really sad to hear this. I attended Guilford my first two years of college (1977-'79) and absolutely loved it. It was an idyllic place and rather life-changing for me. I took a lot of art, English, and religion classes, as well as the required freshman-year class “Being Human in the Twentieth Century,” which was great and very thoughtfully taught.
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I forgot I posted about Guilford College here. I read somewhere that there has been a very passionate reaction to Guilford College’s news and they reconsidered. A quick Google search turns up this result: https://myfox8.com/news/guilford-college-professor-credits-grassroots-group-with-saving-his-job/
I don’t think they’re out of the woods, but they are at least no longer planning to fire the affected professors.
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Laurentian University (in Canada) has filed for what appears from the news article to be the Canadian equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Laurentian is a decent-sized (~9k students) and respectable, though undercapitalized, university. They have been fairly open about the precariousness of their situation since early on in the pandemic, but even so it’s unexpected for an institution like this to essentially go into financial exigency.
WOW!
Laurentian is a bilingual public university. I would have thought that the Ontario government would have stepped in before it reached this point.
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Seems a lot of consolidation in Pennsylvania first we had Drexel and Hahnemann Medical college then Thomas Jefferson University and Philadelphia University. The Pennsylvania State System universities combining 6 universities into 2. Now St Joseph University considering a merger with University of Sciences.
I’m waiting for the shoes to drop in the PASSHE system. That’s going to get ugly, but I don’t see how they can avoid it.
This just came across the wire in the Chronicle of Higher Education, on kind of the flip side of everything we’ve been talking about in this thread: Why Haven’t More Colleges Closed?
I’m pretty sure it’s paywalled, but the question it poses is probably worth a bit of discussion. A quote from near the beginning frames it well:
Two hundred closures, 500, 1,000—these predictions steeled us for the worst. So what has the cost been so far? How many colleges have shuttered?
Ten—at least that’s the number of permanent closures or consolidations between the beginning of March 2020 and the end of January 2021 according to Higher Ed Dive, which has been tracking college closure announcements. The prognosticators have been wrong, so far—off by factors of 10 or 20 or nearly 100, though in fairness, some predictions were for longer time periods.
These 10 have been small, private institutions, and were often in deep financial trouble before the pandemic. [For example,] MacMurray College, in Illinois, said the coronavirus’s disruptions were “not the principal reasons” for closure.
The article also points out that over the entirety of the Great Depression, only about 2% of all colleges in the country closed. So a good question becomes: Why in the world is higher ed so financially resilient? (The article proposes some reasons, but they honestly kind of feel like generic handwaving to me.)
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There was really no good reason why Sweet Briar didn’t close, except that some wealthy alums fought for it. I don’t think they are bringing in more money in tuition now, probably losing money on dorms, did do some belt tightening on majors and perks.
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Wow, they gutted their A&S. They can’t survive those cuts.
Looks like Becker in Worcester, MA is closing.
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Mills College! (Which is one that looked good for my D25. Not so much anymore, though.
)
At a $187.3M endowment, we may have a new record.
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B- grade on 2021 Forbes list, around top 30% of all schools listed, strange.
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