http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/03/05/effort-to-right-size-the-unc-system-in-the-works/
North Carolina considers downsizing and closings, too.
I brought this up at the end of my BMC club board meeting today and the whole room fell silent. There was tremendous interest and concern about SBC and what this means for other women’s colleges. We talked about not taking for granted the institutional advantages we presently enjoy – our endowment that is large enough to cushion us NOW, our suburban location that is more popular with students NOW, etc. None of us should assume that a model that is working at present will necessarily be adequate when new economic realities, new preferences among young people, etc. We also talked about some SBC women potentially coming to BMC this fall.
@merc81, if students and their parents are willing to pay private school prices for a college that provides an education and opportunities similar to a high school, then you’d have a point. I’m quite certain they’re not, however. Plus, as @kelsmom points out, colleges have to deal with many governmental mandates that high schools don’t have to. Take all that in, and the minimum sustainable size for a nonspecialized college is more like 5X-10X the minimum sustainable size of a boarding HS. How many colleges would be able to attract students if they only offered 12 or less majors, for instance? Only really specialized schools like Olin/Webb/Cooper Union, IMO.
Purple- I agree with your point, and the trustees of Cooper Union have been dealing with all the fallout of THEIR business model becoming obsolete over the last few years. The narrow curriculum has become a problem- and as the Cornell/Technion program in NYC heats up for engineering, it remains to be seen whether Cooper Union will be able to hang out to their niche.
I’m actually surprised my comment got the response it did. It was more a nascent thought on my part then a developed idea. But 5X-10X larger as a minimum? You lost me there.
@merc81, not sure what’s hard to comprehend?
A private day school with 100 students can easily thrive despite everyone taking virtually the same curriculum, offering no majors, no study-abroad opportunities, no research opportunities, and no job/internship search support. It also doesn’t have to deal with much government or accrediting body mandates.
Can you successfully attract students to a college like that nowadays?
I was working off the 400 figure for a boarding high school that I offered as a hypothetical upthread. Even using the lower end of your range, 5X larger, as the minimum enrollment criterion for a sustainable non-specialized college, then a fully functional college would require at least 2000 students. This is simply not true.
Within your own comments, you referred first to a boarding high school as your basis, then subsequently to a private day school, yet kept the same line of reasoning. So I’m not sure you made yourself particularly easy to comprehend.
What 4 year colleges with under 1000 students are there that are not academically specialized? Especially with no consortium or cross registration?
@ucbalumnus Schools with under 1000 students that are not religious, woman’s schools, historically black or academically specialized
Wells College
Ripon College
Bennington
Warren Wilson
Oglethorp
Wabash (men"s college)
St. John’s College (classic books)
New College of Fl
Two very good small LACs that are part of consortiums are Haverford and Harvey Mudd. I guess that makes the argument for consortiums.
St Johns is very obviously specialized and Warren Wilson has a work/study philosophy that I think makes it attractive to some. (Though I had friends who taught there and they were very happy to move on.)
Marlboro College in Vermont is a small LAC, no religious affiliation, coed, and not specialized–there are 230 students. It’s one of the CTCL colleges.
Speaking based on what I hear from a friend whose son attends Wabash . . . Wabash is very different in that it is an economic and political engine in Indiana. “Wabash Men” become well prepared and well connected so it has a natural draw and natural source of continued funding. From what she tells me it has a very strong regional purpose and identity which hasn’t become anachronistic.
Hollins offers 27 majors for less than 600 undergraduates. With graduate students, total enrollment is about 800.
Bennington offers only six courses in math this term: http://curriculum.bennington.edu/spring2015/category/areas-of-study/science-mathematics-and-computing/mathematics/ . None is a junior/senior level course that math majors typically take.
St. John’s College has an obviously specialized curriculum, with the core “great books” curriculum being the entire curriculum for all students.
Of those which appear to be able to support enough faculty to offer at least minimally adequate courses in a wide range of majors (although once every two years may not be too convenient), how are they able to support enough such faculty? Big endowment, external funding source (e.g. a state or a church), or enough appeal to tuition-paying students?
Soka University of America has 412 undergraduates. From what I know about the college, they don’t to have a particularly specialized curriculum.
Soka, a billion dollar endowment, a spectacular location. St John’s 125 mil. Also a desirable area. Agnes Scott, 915 kids, a 250 mil endowment, City location. We can dig up examples.
@merc81, for a boarding school, I’d say 200 is the lower limit. Just because you use 400 doesn’t mean that I consider that the lower limit,
Soka is very specialized (with only 4 concentrations for the BA degree), has a $1B endowment, and has a religious draw. St. John’s is also very specialized, as @ucbalumnus pointed out.
Marlboro and NCF have individualized study plans (plus, as a public in a state with good demographics and in-state tuition & state support, I don’t think NCF has to worry about not getting enough students to make the place run)
Agnes Scott is helped by its metropolitan location and has various pre-professional programs where it feeds in to Emory, GTech, and elsewhere.
Works colleges like Warren Wilson can get by because of their low costs.
Ripon is actually about 1K. Oglethorpe is a little over.
I’m not terrible sanguine about Bennington, Wells, or Hollins.
BTW, from http://www.ncf.edu/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=4d3260d2-ae1a-4a7f-a8a4-bf1c4860fda4&groupId=48902:
“1 Among the top 99 national liberal arts colleges, only four schools (Harvey Mudd College 777, Soka University of
America 441, Thomas Aquinas College 358, College of the Atlantic 363) have enrollments less than ours and there
are only four others with enrollments less than 1000 (Scripps 983, Wabash 910, Agnes Scott 871, Millsaps 985). Of
these, two (Harvey Mudd and Scripps) are part of a Claremont consortium of five adjacent schools, two are single
sex (Wabash – male, Agnes Scott – female), three have religious affiliations (Soka – Buddhist, Thomas Aquinas –
Catholic, Millsaps – United Methodist), and the remaining has a single focus (College of the Atlantic –
Environment).”
As @saintfan said, Wabash will be fine. Thomas Aquinas (like St. Johns) offers a simple specialized Great Books curriculum (no majors).
Having an environmental focus is more of a sustainable draw these days than being a non-elite women’s college, IMO.
Small, private liberal arts colleges may be struggling. That doesn’t mean the liberal arts are struggling. In researching colleges for my children, I’ve come across many mentions of public universities with “liberal arts honors colleges.”
So, if you can attend a public honors college within a flagship university, you can have the liberal arts, a larger array of majors, with people who major in liberal arts subjects as classmates, a large, bustling campus, boys, Starbucks, and not go into horrendous debt. It’s hard to compete with that.