Because most kids have ZERO interest in attending anything as small as any liberal arts college and thus never apply to one. It’s really that simple. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I’m guessing the total number of unique applicants to all LACs combined (elite or otherwise) in a given year is a tiny fraction of the total number of unique applicants to state or private universities.
This isn’t a qualitative statement, to be clear, it’s simply a numbers distinction. In a lot of ways, elite LACs are outliers in this equation (which is why some here might define them as “niche” in general). I mean UCLA alone had 100,000 applicants in 2014 and Penn State had 120,000, whereas Williams had 6,300. One can get an “arts and science education” at any of them.
Re the “brain dead” comment, some may have taken offense, but I didn’t because I recognize that poster and it was used for dramatic effect. Again, CONTEXT is everything.
@happymomof1: “Ultimately, for all too many families, the LACs are just plain too expensive.”
In sticker price terms, at least. Having run the net price calculators for the 19 schools remaining on my oldest’s short-ish list (about half LACs and about half public flagships and near-flagships, plus one private R1) several of the LACs are in real terms cheaper than all but one of the public universities for us. (We’re in Alaska, and none of our in-state schools offer majors remotely similar to her interests—those, of course, would have been way cheaper.) In terms of sticker price, though, it’s no contest—even with out-of-state tuition, the LACs are nearly all more expensive than the publics.
I understand (and even approve of) the high sticker price/high aid model. I do worry, though, that it results in some leaving LACs (and other private schools, too) off their lists before they even give them a chance—I mean, I’m pretty deeply embedded in higher ed, and the net price results were a big surprise to me, so I can only imagine what it’d be like for someone totally unfamiliar with the landscape. (I’m now just glad that I let her make her initial lists without regard to price.)
" I do worry, though, that it results in some leaving LACs (and other private schools, too) off their lists before they even give them a chance—I mean, I’m pretty deeply embedded in higher e"
Instead of niche, you could say instead “customer experience”, “price/value” proposition and “market differentiation.”
No two schools are exactly like. You want to be differentiated to avoid being a commodity. But not so differentiated that insufficient customers will pay for the product.
For SBC, small, rural, beautiful campus, horses, all girl, southern, meh academics, meh price (after the discounts they had to give), finishing school legacy, engineering program and no Starbucks didn’t sell well enough.
But, you ARE making a qualitative argument. You are drawing an inference that the market for small liberal arts colleges is qualitatively different from the market for a college of arts and sciences. Market share alone doesn’t justify such a distinction. AT&T has fewer customers than Verizon. That doesn’t make AT&T a niche phone company. That’s just crazy.
@dfbdfb - We barely had a community college transfer to State U budget, an EFC that was very nearly the COA of that State U, and a kid with decent but not exceptional grades. No LAC that I know of would have given her the kind of aid that would have made attendance possible. Yes, there is money out there for kids with better grades than hers, and for kids with ACT/SAT scores in a certain range, and often there is just enough money for kids like her to get the COA down to the EFC, or maybe a tiny bit below the EFC. However for a kid like mine, expecting that the LAC mom would love kid to attend will come up with enough aid to bring the costs down to what the CC costs is just plain crazy.
Fortunately, my kid loved her CC and her State U, and is living her dream. So that is all good.
The price you pay…depends In or out of state? Need based financial aid or not? Merit aid or not? How smart a kid?
For doughnut hole families, the prices can be all over the place. [By doughnut hole I mean families that wouldn’t qualify for much/any need-based aid but who really can’t afford to pay full $60k sticker price either.] I have one kid in-state at a flagship. Other kid (who is smarter) at a fancy far away private school with merit aid. Same exact price.
If the kid is very smart and very poor, the Ivy League is cheap. Free actually. Many LACs and private schools would be cheap as well.
For a not as smart, not as poor kid, no private school may be within financial reach. 2 CC + 2 in-State U may be the only option. And even that may be a stretch.
Well, @happymomof1, transfers are generally under different financial aid rules (for reasons I don’t like, but that’s what it is)—so the net price stuff I was talking about really doesn’t apply in those cases.
(Edited to make it clearer what I was responding to.)
“For a not as smart, not as poor kid, no private school may be within financial reach. 2 CC + 2 in-State U may be the only option. And even that may be a stretch.”
“a lot fewer students are willing to commit to a LAC as an irrevocable first choice.”
Right. Which tells you a lot by itself.
I encourage many of my students to look at, apply to, and attend LACs. But I give all of them a warning that isn’t necessary at larger schools: be certain that this is the right place for you. If you go to a Michigan, or even a Vanderbilt, and you have a rough freshman year, you can start all over again at the same school. With a different dorm, different major, different activities, you’re more or less at a different school. You never have to see the people from freshman year again. At Swarthmore, you’re going to see them at breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, every year. In other words, there are 1000 different Michigans and probably a dozen Vanderbilts, but there’s only one Swarthmore. Take it or leave it.
A lot of privates these days offer discounts (merit awards) even to kids who aren’t at the top of the heap.
Not the elite LACs, but a decent number of Catholic schools and other privates. Granted, maybe not enough to match the price of 2 years of CC + 2 years of in-state costs, but likely enough to match 4 years of in-state costs.
Some publics may offer merit discounts even if you’re not at the top statistically as well.
So, now it’s Duke, Chicago, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Stanford, and Berkeley that are “fungible”? If nothing else, this subthread illustrates the perils of deviating too far from common parlance when describing different kinds of American colleges.
My apologies, I was referring to the quality of the product itself, not the quality of the market.
That’s such great advice. My son actually came to that conclusion himself very late in the spring of his senior year. And he WAS someone who absolutely thought he wanted to attend a small, selective LAC, even after visiting several and loving the environment at each. But after four years at a small elite private high school, he just couldn’t do it. He chose a big state flagship (albeit one with an honors college and extremely generous merit money) because he wanted flexibility, both with regard to possible majors and socially. And it’s worked out beautifully for him.
As parents we wanted the “best” school for him, and I personally pushed LACs because I hold the best of them in such high regard and because he’d always thrived in a “small school” environment, but given his particular aptitudes and our “doughnut hole” position, the only ones that would have been a good “fit” were the very competitive ones with the most generous FA policies. That he had the choice of a couple of terrific schools and still chose the OOS flagship was pretty shocking to me.
I found @Hanna’s point somewhat novel for an educator, in that it emphasized the social aspects of college selection over the pedagogical ones, even if only indirectly. Nonetheless, I thought the points she made could help students with a certain type of personality choose a more comfortable social environment, and therefore a more successful academic outcome.
“So, now it’s Duke, Chicago, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Stanford, and Berkeley that are “fungible”?”
I think you misunderstood me. I meant that there are a dozen Vanderbilts AT Vanderbilt. It’s big enough that there are separate worlds within the space that don’t have to overlap much.
I understand @Hanna point, I think it is overstated. I graduated from a LAC with 850 students. While Swarthmore is smaller than the LAC I graduated from, you recognize most people, but you do not know them all. I am now friends with someone in my graduating class who I never met in college. You spend most of your time with those in your major and in your ECs. My sister attended the same school I did, and had a totally different experience.