So how would one go about finding out whether or not their student’s school is financially secure? @ucbalumnus I found your link interesting. Thanks for sharing. It just goes to show that even the experts aren’t experts, I guess. I’m a bit discomforted, as my son is considering the all male school in VA and I can’t help but worry whether or not he might be in for the same fate as these young women.
What is the school allowed to do with the endowment funds? and $ from sale of the property? I’d be furious if I were a donor. I also can’t comprehend how they couldn’t figure something out. There are other options besides co-ed. They could have started online classes and residential could be for 2 years instead of 4. They could have converted the school to a girls boarding school…and certainly…they could have kept it operational for 1 more year to allow juniors to graduate and others to transition out. It’s baffling.
Bain and Company and Sterling Partners put together a report not that long ago on “The Sustainable University.” www.thesustainableuniversity.com/ It was updated for 2014.
This essay outlines concerns for colleges: www.bain.com/publications/articles/financially-sustainable-university.aspx.
Sweet Briar College fell into the least desireable quadrant, “At risk for slipping into an unsustainable financial condition.” There are many colleges in that quadrant.
Mary Baldwin College, on the other hand, falls into the quadrant, “These colleges and universities are financially sound according to the latest available data.”
I looked up Sweet Briar College on College Navigator.
Was it still a liberal arts college? It had very few graduates who completed tradtional liberal arts majors, such as philosophy, English, history, economics, languages, etc.
Its largest cohort of graduates were business majors (24). The next largest were visual and performing arts (13). Only 97 graduates in 2013 from an enrollment of 701. (You would expect more than 150.) They lost about 43% of the enrolled freshman class before graduation. Almost half the student body chose to go elsewhere, or not finish.
@Periwinkle your links don’t work btw.
that still doesn’t explain the abrupt closure. there would have been no harm in changing their mission. yes, the board says risky- but closing is worse than taking a risk.
@ucbalumnus I was reviewing that information very carefully last evening. I too wondered how Sweet Briar was rated so high yet closed so quickly. Is it that Forbes only looks at the endowment amount and uses some basic formula to compute the rating? My daugther goes to a LAC in VA as well and her school is rated at a B or B-…don’t recall. I felt so sad and so heart broken for all those young girls going through this turmoil. They certainly did not need this at this time in their life. If a closing was inevitable then it should have been announced some time ago and provided the sudents an opportunity to rethink their plans as well as apply/transfer to other schools. This can only leave a bitter taste in the mouths of both students, staff and alumni.
I certainly hope this is not the trend for other colleges as well. I worry for so many young adults.
Standard and Poor’s last year issued an online report that listed the bond ratings of all private colleges. However, the link no longer works, and I couldn’t find it in a search today.
Mary Baldwin and Sweet Briar are very dissimilar colleges. MBC has been successfully attracting non-traditional and older students for years. Also, MBC is a bit closer to the attractions of Charlottesville and further up the road, NOVA.
Oooh, this is a scary article and interface. http://www.thesustainableuniversity.com/ Lots of good LACs are in the “unsustainable” blocks, including my kid’s. Great. Another thing to worry about!
This is very scary indeed - especially because these charts make it nearly impossible to tell how your student’s school really is doing financially. I find it hard to interpret when they clump schools such as Sweet Briar in the same category as Carnegie Mellon and Villanova. Maybe I’m being naive, but I just can’t even begin to imagine them announcing in March that they will be closing in August due to financial issues. These charts and articles make it so hard to evaluate the truth of the matter and I’m certain that the schools aren’t going to disclose that information to prospective students.
CMU seems to be doing ok, but the difference is that if need be, CMU/any college near its ranking can get a ton of donations from alumni, many of which are wealthy or well off. Small colleges do not have this option.
I guess my point is that these charts place them in the same clump which on first glance makes them appear to be in similar danger of failing financially where I agree with you that they are not.
re post #67: I question the validity/reliability of the criteria used in evaluating sustainability. Virginia Intermont College was grouped in the “financially sound” box in the lower left and they closed in 2014 due to “significant financial difficulties.”
It seems to me they had other viable options to stay afloat but they chose not to pursue them in order to protect the college’s tradition (which I think is a somewhat stupid move).
Opening up to male students?
Reducing tuition aid to students (currently at a whopping 62% average!)?
Selling off some of it’s land?
Adding more popular majors?
There are other colleges that have managed to stay afloat that are in a much weaker position than Sweet Briar (Prescott College for example).
fractalmstr, Sweet Briar already did some of those things, like offering engineering. They couldn’t reduce tuition aid, because they had to discount tuition just to get more students.
“certainly…they could have kept it operational for 1 more year to allow juniors to graduate and others to transition out.”
How is that certain? How would they have retained faculty and staff for that additional year? You’d have students as well as workers quitting left and right. And what kind of experience do you give those students in their senior year with no younger students on campus? In practice, that year would be a 9-month funeral at best.
“residential could be for 2 years instead of 4.”
Who would be interested in that? The whole appeal of the school was the intense community, close relationships with professors, and its traditions. Other institutions with better brand names have more experience offering online programs.
“They could have converted the school to a girls boarding school”
There’s a viable market for THAT?
“yes, the board says risky- but closing is worse than taking a risk.”
Maybe, maybe not. What if you devalue all the degrees you’ve given out? A hail-Mary risk on the future of the college might cause a big public flameout that embarrasses its past.
I wondered about their trying to appeal to fathers of daughters in patriarchal cultures who nonetheless wanted their daughters to have an American college degree. THere were some of these women at my women’s college in the 1980’s – from places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Dads might think that a rural isolated women’s college was ideal, if they wanted to keep their daughters from ‘partying’, etc.
We live a couple of hours from Lynchburg and people in the area are wondering what will become of the land and beautiful houses, etc. It would make an incredible resort or something of that ilk.
It would make good space to lease out for corporate training programs, using the model of the “Q Center” outside Chicago (which used to be a small Catholic college before Arthur Andersen bought the facilities).
From what I’ve read, the school screwed over the current students in pretty much the worst way possible, announcing in March that the school would be closing at the end of the current semester. Is there any way they could have sold off some of their land or used their endowment to keep the school open so that the current students could at least finish? Even if they had launched a Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign, they probably could have raised enough to keep the school open a few more years.
I can’t imagine that many American young women would want to go to a school that also appeals to fathers of daughters in patriarchal cultures from places like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan! SB already had enough of a problem attracting/retaining students.
@Momzie I see where you are coming from but most of these women’s colleges are far more liberal and loose than regular co-ed schools, at least from what the FB posts my friends at women’s colleges tell me.