@saintfan, I agree about the “Think is for girls” message. It seems juvenile and condescending.
If they had renamed the school Oak Tree College, gone coed, and de-emphasized horses and the finishing school aspect, what would have happened to alumnae contributions?
Right. You all are suggesting that SBC should have just made-like-everyone-else. But they WEREN’T. Like it or not, they had their brand. They could either go full out on their branding and hope that there was a sufficient niche of girls who liked pink and green, rural Virginia, Preppy Handbook outtakes - or they could compete with everyone else and be a shadow of them.
To brand properly, you have to have a point of distinction.
Does anybody know what has happened since Randolph Macon Women’s College made radical changes like this?
Maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s because I don’t have any daughters, but I really don’t get the disparaging of Sweet Briar’s color scheme or “girly” fonts, etc. Pink and green are no more ridiculous to me than some of the hideous color combinations I see at other colleges and universities. And their mascot (the vixen) is a female fox in addition to being a woman of questionable character. I kind of like it. And it’s a lot more original than a lot of big time sports mascots (how many tigers are too many?).
I thought Sweet Briar’s website was very nice, as well, and the alumnae I’ve met were impressive women. I would no more discount their intellect or achievements because they happened to ride horses than I would discount that of a guy who played lacrosse or football. Why are we perpetuating these stereotypes?
I totally get that it wouldn’t be the first choice for a lot of young women, but just because somebody likes “girly” color combinations (I guess everyone in Bermuda is girly!) or chooses to dress in preppy and other traditional clothing doesn’t mean she’s an intellectual lightweight.
And as far as folks at UVa. looking down on Sweet Briar and making sexist comments about the students there, I’m guessing they look down on most other Virginia schools. Condescension, sadly, is par for the course at elite schools.
I agree. I think that rebranding is a lot harder than folks make it sound.
My go-to example for this is JCPenney. They tried to change their branding under their last CEO, Ron Johnson, and they ended up losing both their old sale-hunting/coupon-clipper customers and their new target customers who hate those things.
Maybe Sweet Briar would have survived if it abandoned its niche, or maybe it would have just imploded faster as it gave up its ‘old’ supporters and didn’t win over any new people.
Hunt, during my time around the hills and hollers of Lexington VA, the locals often declared that Southern Seminary in Buena Vista was a school for girls looking for the MRS degree. Never heard that expression until I arrived in ol’ Virginny. That was in the 1980s.
I don’t know that SBC would have been able to overcome current trends in education had they done things differently. I only know that staying the course didn’t work.
Contrast the branding I noted in post #477 with the messaging for Dana Hall, an all-girls secondary school founded 20 years before SBC and also known for its riding program. The first thing you see on the main web page is “Dana Hall knows that being smart is only the beginning.”
http://www.danahall.org/admission/index.aspx
This message assumes that girls are smart and that more than passivity is expected of them, while the grammatically incorrect “Think is for girls” seems to assume that women don’t already know that.
All the rebranding would have been mere lipstick on a pig without revamping the school’s value. The market share of potential customers just dwindled --and will continue to do so-- in front of them, and the spiral into more mediocrity in terms of applicants was hard to stop, if not entirely impossible.
In the end, there are a number of schools that no longer deserved a continuing existence on pure value. Without extraordinary support from the fringes (as in religious or political extreme groups) a number of schools are simply doomed. It is especially hard for schools with a narrower target (as non coed) or without a large pool of families willing to spend the money to support their views on education. SBC is not Antioch, but in the end, they deal with the same problem: life in the 21st century has become more pragmatic.
That beefy English obnoxious dude on the Food Network should start a show named College Impossible.
Branding and differentiating are always uncertain.
Maybe we should shoot the horses to prove once and for all that WE ARE NOT A FINISHING SCHOOL!!!
Or maybe we should embrace what makes us unique and differentiated. MORE HORSES!!!
Maybe both of those could have worked. Or neither.
Horses plus female engineering seems like a tough one to pull off.
ahemSmith Collegeahem Though certainly not impossible.
@LucieTheLakie, you can have too many Tigers but never enough Wildcats.
I look forward to the first Final Four that is composed of all Wildcats.
This is after Google extends my life by 500 years.
I am pretty sure that Smith’s fortunes hardly depend on horses cum engineering. It is already one of the largest LACs in the country and is part of a consortium for academic choices. It is also located in a town that many find attractive. And then, they have strong mottos such as “Smith College: a century of women on top." and “It’s not a girl’s school without men; it’s a women’s college without boys.”
Just as Wellesley, it has the chops to survive in a more challenging environment. Schools such as SBC did not have as many aces up their sleeves.
"Maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s because I don’t have any daughters, but I really don’t get the disparaging of Sweet Briar’s color scheme or “girly” fonts, etc. Pink and green are no more ridiculous to me than some of the hideous color combinations I see at other colleges and universities. "
I completely agree. I don’t see what’s wrong with it. It didn’t have the appeal it needed to be sustainable, but better to be true to yourself than try to water down and be like everyone else.
It’s rather like saying - I don’t see a lot of places offering duck shoes anymore, so maybe LL Bean shouldn’t offer them. Nope - that’s what they are. That’s their brand.
There’s enough undifferentiation in higher education as is - there are only a few brands that are truly all that well differentiated, IMO.
They did what they could. I wish everyone associated with Sweet Briar well.
Funny you mention L.L. Bean duck boots, @Pizzagirl, because they’re suddenly “hot” again:
And apparently Sweet Briar alumnae are not going down without a fight:
I agree this group of alumnea are not going down with out a fight they have raised over 2 million already and with a goal of 5 million by Tuesday. They have hired a prominent law firm and PR to enlist in their fight.
Fighting this to throw good money after bad? Or to fund a race to the bottom?
Where are next year’s Freshman going to come from if they are successful in keeping the doors open a while longer?
This is crazy.
The prominent lawyer will be happy. With the rest of the pledges --if paid up-- they can have one last party with all the fixings.
The college bosses should send a couple of refresher notes on Econ to those good-hearted people.
They’re (according to savingsweetbriar.com) retaining a law firm to sue to overturn the board’s decision to close the college. I’m not sure how realistic that is; to me, once a college announces that it’s closing I’m probably not going to hitch my (metaphorical!) horse to it. (They’re also [appealing to current Sweet Briar](http://savingsweetbriar.com/saving-sweet-briar-group-urges-current-sweet-briar-college-students-to-wait-before-committing-to-other-schools/) students not to commit to transferring out right away.)
The firm they hired is Troutman Sanders LLP by the way.
Here’s a draft of SBC’s 2011 strategic plan.
http://sbc.edu/strategic-plan/draft