I’ve been beating my brains out about the name of the old-fashioned ice cream parlor that used to be just opposite the gate where the Wellesley campus met the edge of town: Bailey’s!! It had wire ice cream parlor chairs, and all of the classic accoutrements. Loved that place. It was traditional to walk down and get an ice cream cone on Patriot’s Day and then walk back along the road where the Boston Marathon went by. I remember the first year women were actually allowed to run. You could hear this huge roar building as the first woman reached the part of the road lined with Wellesley students, and it rolled along the road as she passed. Brings a tear to my eye.
I have to smile about all this weight to the proximity to a Starbucks. D just got home last night for break. She was telling me that there are 4 Starbucks kiosks on her campus and she said what they really needed was a Dunkin Donuts on campus instead of so many Starbucks. I guess its all a matter of taste.
I was familiar with some of the “female” colleges from my mother’s friends, but really these colleges that stayed small are highly regional both the single sex and the coed and if there is not enough of a regional draw or some national pull like religion etc to seat a full class there is the potential for the inability to continue the business.
I’m not sure how many of these tiny non-specialized LACs with enrollment under 1K (so about the size of a mid-sized HS) can survive in the future unless they are part of a consortium. There is something that comes from size and economy of scale.
Yes. Under 1000 is a very small number of students to support a college infrastructure. Wells was also one that I wondered how they continued operations
I think these sub-1000-enrollment schools are an interesting part of the American college landscape, so I would like to see the remaining ones do well. I think the ones that will face difficulty are the ones that aren’t small by design, and that have fallen to a lower enrollment because of lack of interest.
I don’t know where Wells College would like to be in terms of enrollment. But the school seems to be in a beautiful location, and their acceptance rate is a respectable 60%.
I wonder if those boarding schools have a similar cost structure to a college. I think you’re right that schools that are small by design probably will fare better than schools that shrunk due to lack of interest. My understanding is that Sweet Briar’s enrollment totals have been lower than budgeted for at least a few years now which really hurt them. They never intended to be a huge school but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t want to be a certain size.
@merc81, boarding schools aren’t really expected to provide support for specialized majors (and the option of switching between them), research opportunities, job placement support, study-abroad options, and a plethora of other services and opportunities (all of which require people and cost money) which many kids these days want.
High schools have far fewer courses to offer and manage, compared to colleges. Subject areas typically are limited to:
English
math (including statistics and CS)
history and social studies
science (biology, chemistry, and physics)
a few foreign languages
art
music
physical education and sports
A college with that few departments (including where history and social studies were lumped into one department; same with science) would likely be seen as very “limited” or “incomplete” in its offerings.
Also, high school students take courses in most or all of these subjects in a well defined progression, while college students can choose various majors such that there can be many pairings of college students who take none of the same courses (sometimes even within the same major).
A college may be maintaining departments that offer full course work (to allow students to major in the subject) but only get 3 students per year to major in them and therefore take many of the courses. This type of situation tends not to happen in high schools, so high schools’ teaching resources tend to be more efficiently used than those at small colleges.
Washington and lee is coed now and is growing its freshman class every year. But it is top LAC. D graduated last year (public HS). VMI is also now coed. I hadn’t heard of W&L until my niece went there.
I’m not sure there’s a big market for more boarding schools out there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the locals are hoping it can be converted into a resort a la the Old Money, very traditional Greenbriar in WV:
Does Cuban have a point? Is this just the beginning of colleges closing? Is the student debt problem about to reach a tipping point? I haven’t read his comments yet. I don’t know if I can link to another site from here or not. You can google his name to find his comments on this. He also says the NASDAQ is in a bubble worse that the tech crash of 2001 so he is making some big predictions lately.
In response to the well informed comments by @PurpleTitan and @ucbalumnus, my reference to a thriving boarding school with 400 students (and perhaps five forms) was not necessarily intended to show an exact numerical correspondence, but more of a proportional one. If economies of scale allow for a 400-student residential school of any type, then a small, four-year residential college may also be viable, even if it must maintain double that enrollment.
I work at a very small college. It is challenging to be an administrator in this environment. Each small change made by others … students, bosses, government, etc … has a much bigger impact on the staff of a small school than it does on the staff of a larger school. And I will say that the needs of and expectations of a private K12 are so much different than those of a college, particularly one that accepts federal funding, that it is not useful to use as a comparison.
Interesting article mirrors what some said https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/05/where-will-sweet-briars-85m-endowment-go Any leftover funds could go to an independent scholarship for Virginia women. Or to other VA schools to manage as they please, but earmarked for VA women or women in engineering, eg… There could be a suggestion that preference goes to former SB students- but I suspect the process of getting approvals from the AG will be lengthy, no way done by this fall. And I suspect the largest donors do have escape clauses built into their donor contracts. There had been rumblings for a few years and the very largest donors would have been savvy, done more than just write a check.
Side note: as for exclusive boarding schools, you have to realize how many of them are already offering substantial finaid, too, to attract a wider pool, to offer diversity, and attract highly qualified kids.