Absolutely it is unsustainable, but when you have a facility of a certain size it takes a certain number of people and amount of resources to run it, even if it isn’t fully used.
My alma mater, Wellesley, significantly increased its student body shortly after I graduated, in the 70s. The current enrollment is 2,474. I think it was more like 1400-1700 when I was there. They started out by fitting more students into the existing dorms–it was the norm to have a single after freshman year, don’t know if it is now–then gradually converted some existing buildings. Clearly, they knew 40 years ago that it would be financially advantageous.
On the other hand, W has never had a problem recruiting as many accomplished students as they want, even after the coeducation wave of the 70s.
Boy that’s some stereotyping, northwesty. You realize you can ride a horse and find a mate at lots of schools?
W has s lot going for it. Still, we need to see what fallout reaches even them, if families are worried. My Smith and MHC friends have been noting changes at those for some time, to keep momentum. CC knows both work the discounts as best they can. And they reach out as broadly as they can.
I know of one young woman this year who has applied to attend a women’s college where it is her first choice. My D refused despite having had a great visit. I think out of a class of over 400 seniors, there were at most 1 or 2 girls who were heading to a women’s college when D graduated. I know that these colleges (not necessarily SB) have a great track record for their graduates, but it is an almost impossible sale, and that’s for colleges located in or closer to more urban areas.
@Pizzagirl I am hearing , just not agreeing. What bothered my the most was the presidents comment about “the nearest Starbucks is 30minutrs away”. Really? Very dismissive and complete deflection of responsibility… I feel for these young women. At the very least SBC should honor the commitment to FA / merit (to the extent that the earmarked endowment allows) and cover any COA gaps at transfer schools.
“At the very least SBC should honor the commitment to FA / merit (to the extent that the earmarked endowment allows) and cover any COA gaps at transfer schools.” – I do agree with this. It would be nice, if they’re able to under the regulations governing such a closure as SBC’s.
LF – Another word for a stereotype is “brand.” Maybe that stereotype was not deserved, but that’s clearly what SBC’s “brand” seemed to me to be at that point in time.
In the 1980s, SBC seemed to me to be very much stuck in the 1950s. I don’t know what they might have tried to do in the last 30 years to change their brand. But it obviously didn’t work.
From a 1980s era SBC alum about the stereotype/brand:
"This is a college where you met the daughters of Texas oil tycoons, and your dorm had a grand piano in the formal parlor. This is a college where some students brought their horses along, boarded them and wore jodhpurs to class. I am not kidding.
It was also a place that seemed to be in a bit of a time warp. Founded in 1901, Sweet Briar was, in a sense, a classic finishing school that had adapted to modern times. But even in the 1980s there were traditions that seemed quaint, odd or, frankly, rooted in a sexist society. School colors were pink and green. The sports teams were called the Vixens (with a cute fox mascot).
Sometimes, signs would appear in the dining hall announcing a “ring game” on the quad after lunch. Seniors would form a circle holding a ribbon from which dangled a diamond ring. The women would push the ring to the next student as it went by in a fast, hot-potato game. After the third go-round, one woman would pull out a pair of scissors, cut the ribbon and put the ring on her finger, to squeals of delight. This was how engagements were announced.
Fresh yogurt from the campus dairy farm was served daily. The Lester Lanin Orchestra played at formals, where the booze flowed among the tuxedo- and taffeta-clad guests. And groups from the surrounding men’s colleges – Washington and Lee, Hampden Sydney, Virginia Military Institute (only one of which, Hampden Sydney, is all male today) – were only too happy to make the road trip to SBC to host parties at the rustic boathouse on the lake."
Uva has a polo team. You don’t get much more male finishing school than that. And Foxfield–again prep finishing school stuff to the max. I have seen no proof that the focus of SBC was the equestrian aspect. I know they added engineering and business at great expense. The SBC stables are nothing special. Many Va colleges–even Liberty- have that. It’s a thing.
Wellesley also has dorms with formal parlors and pianos that are very 1950’s-women’s-college. All of the remaining Seven Sisters have old-fashioned, quaint traditions (like hoop-rolling and Flower Sunday at Wellesley).
And the description of the ring game at SBC sounds pretty much identical in spirit to how we passed candles in sororities to celebrate pinnings and engagements in the mid 1980’s - someone put up a sign, we gathered together, held hands in a circle, passed a lit candle and the person who was pinned / engaged blew it out.
I don’t see what that has to do with why the college got into financial trouble. It’s not the quaint traditions, per se.
I’ve lived in 8 states from coast to coast, consider myself fairly knowledgeable about colleges, have been to hundreds of schools over my lifetime, and I had never heard of Sweet Briar until my daughters received a post card (pink and green, with a girl riding a horse- could have been about a summer camp) when they were seniors. I had to look it up. I’d bet not more than a handful of SBC students were from the west coast or even midwest. Neither of my daughters (even the horsey one) had any interest, and one did consider Smith. For many of the reasons Hanna and Pizzagirl have mentioned, the single sex college experience didn’t appeal to either of my kids. Smith pushed the single sex aspect much too much for my daughter, but if she would have agreed to attend the biggest selling point would have been the other schools in the consortium; she was not drawn to the ‘women can be leaders’ part of the pitch, but to ‘look, we have free rafting trips with boys’ photos on the brochures. In the end, she picked a school based on the academics, not based on the horses or rafting.
To the people who worked there and to the students, this is a very big deal, but to ‘education’ as a whole? The 500 or so students will be able to transfer easily to other schools. The faculty and staff will have a much harder time.
I also don’t think there were be $92M or $50M to be distributed. I think there is a lot more debt than is showing on the books right now. Who knows what the facilities will be sold for? Who knows what the claims will be?
Interesting, @barrons. So what you’re saying is, that the whole “horsey” thing at SBC wasn’t terribly unique in VA. Probably yet another reason for many prospective students to look elsewhere besides SBC.
“I believe that Sweet Briar has historical prestige. Maybe the “snobby vibe” put off certain demo graphics?”
Many many moons ago, when I was first on CC, I indicated that my D had had some kind of informational interview with them. My knowledge of it was, quite frankly, based on the Preppy Handbook in which it was described as a decent finishing school, but not an academic heavy hitter. (You don’t need to be an academic heavy hitter to have prep prestige, but that’s another discussion.) I distinctly remember some posters - I think JHS among them - suggesting gently that she could do better. Sorry, I don’t think it had historic ACADEMIC prestige. Historic social prestige among a certain crowd? Quite possibly.
@pizzagirl Very well said!! And isn’t that part of the college experience? My D attends a small LAC in VA and is in her Freshman year (she is not from VA). She’s doing well and the eperiences, friends made, etc., have been more than she could ask for. Others in her HS class decided to attend one of the state flagships and everything I hear about their experience there is bad. So there is a lot to say about the small college experience and it’s so sad to me about what’s happening at SBC. I hope over the coming years something positive will happen with the SBC campus. I just can’t believe they will leave it to fall apart.
For many years, the stereotype was that Randolph-Macon and Hollins were the Virginia women’s colleges that were more “academic”, while Sweet Briar was the place for equestriennes and socialites. There may well have been a grain of truth there, but the SB students I knew were smart and hard-working.
Perhaps, but their academic credentials that compose the selectivity index (think USNews or CDS) hardly reflect that the enrolled students were among the smartest and hardest working students in high school.
Part of the problem for a school such as Sweet Briar is that the correct information is getting easier to find. Most anybody armed with an internet connection and a modicum of google skills can uncover what used to be whispered in the old days. The illusion of prestige and rigor is hard to maintain when people learn to scratch the surface and learn that the sweet tea might taste a tad more sour.
This reality is hitting schools such as Sweet Briar in the chops. There are a number of schools that are still trying to obfuscate such reality with misrepresentation – SLC anyone?-- but it will never be as easy as it used to be when older ladies in the HS HC office called their buddies sitting in the admissions’ offices. The 21st century has and will hard for schools that look at the 19th one with a tear in the eye.
Like all schools, it had prestigious departments or programs, professors of repute in a academia. It’s silly to say you didn’t know it and then turn to some found anecdote. From the 80s, no less.
The billionaire’s family bought the campus for $100,000, then put in $5 million in maintenance. The campus has an estimated $1 million/year in maintenance costs. Even mothballed campuses cost money to run.
The original asking price in 2005 was $20 million.
