I’m sorry to say that I think all the people who are trying to find novel (and sometimes outlandish) ways to save Sweet Briar are just exhibiting the sunk costs fallacy.
Hunt- as is clear from my posts, I agree with you 100%. The idea that you can build enrollment at SB with a lower cost model (now, after announcing what is essentially a “going out of business” sale) is another fallacy.
Barrons- good luck building a STEM hub with under-priced chemistry professors. You seem to forget that there are two sides to a market- the supply side (which I agree- 50K buys a lot in rural Virginia) and the demand side. If the students were banging down the doors to the OLD SB model, the school wouldn’t have been in trouble. What is compelling about the new model except for “come study science with a bunch of underpaid subject matter experts who don’t have any research cred but can teach some”???
Unless you add “FOR FREE,” which is part of the problem the college already has.
Could there be something going on behind the scenes to try to get Virginia to absorb SB into the state system of public colleges? That actually might work over time.
My guess is that someone in the Virginia legislature (or Regent/Provost) is going to read a demographic study or two and conclude that adding capacity in a rural location is not the way to build out a higher ed infrastructure for the State.
Just my guess.
blossom, I agree with your evaluation–but how many members of the Virginia legislature have some family connection to Sweet Briar? One of the features of legislatures is that you can sometimes get them to do things that don’t make any sense.
Hunt- when I look at the cracked infrastructure in my state (roads, bridges, inadequate train stations with parking that cannot hold the number of people on the trains) - and a state of the art facility which builds out-of-date military equipment- I am well aware that legislatures (in my case, Congress) vote for stupid things!
Ideas to save SB will continue to float, but chances are that the leadership of the school has heard them all. To transform the school in a government school has probably just as much chance as finding a couple of hundred millions to run a competitive college.
The facilities are probably better suited to be turned in to a fancy boarding school that could prepare the next generations of women to college life. The proposition might be attractive to wealthy foreigners who do not expect much in the form of scholarship and might be attracted by a renewed selectivity.
A tiny liberal arts college with a bucolic campus would be an exciting addition to the public offerings in almost any state, but not Virginia. The range and variety of its public colleges is uniquely outstanding. University of Mary Washington (a former women’s college) is more or less in that niche. Though as Hunt points out, that wouldn’t stop a motivated legislature.
I think this is an early sign of what will be happening to those schools asking for more than the worth in terms of tuition and needing it to keep running. Over the last 15 years, i’m seeing a distinct change in attitude about paying that kind of money to a college wtihout the three Rs of Reputation, Ratings and Recognition. The smaller women’s and church affiliated schools are on the chopping block, IMO.
Studies show that the most important factors in college choice are cost and academic reputation. If, like Sweet Briar, you have a low level of academic selectivity then you are not going to be able to charge as much to fill seats. If you have other things that the market is not really interested in (small, rural, single sex) then your price point erodes even further as you struggle to fill seats.
Well, SB finally said something, make of it what you will: http://sbc.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/SBC-Response-to-Troutman-Sanders1.pdf
So Blossom, you are saying UWEC and UWL kids cant get jobs or get into grad schools? They get good profs for that money and Va is warmer and prettier.
And they do have pretty good CV too
http://www.uwec.edu/Biology/staff/gingerich.htm
http://www.uwec.edu/Biology/staff/kleintjesNeff.htm
http://www.uwec.edu/Staff/clearypa/index.htm
http://www.uwec.edu/Staff/hartsesc/index.htm
Sunk costs are sunk which also means you don’t have to earn any return on them. I think you should be able to break-even with tuition of around $12.5K and R&B at $7.5K for total cost of $20K.
And SBC’s numbers are not 'low". They are solid B average. And there are more average kids than the superstars that tend to frequent CC (and or their parents)
@lookingforward, yep, that’s how Bennington survives.
So count me wrong about that. Agree that the women’s and church-affiliated colleges that few people know about are in dire straits, @cptofthehouse.
Barrons, I’m not saying anything about UWEC or UWL kids- whoever said I was? And now you’re talking jobs and grad schools? SB doesn’t have any Freshman right now- I think worrying about jobs and grad schools is a bit premature.
My point was not to disparage colleges which have science departments staffed by low paid professors. My point was that IF SB is going to sell- and sell hard- its new and improved STEM offerings, then serving up a faculty of underpaid professors with no research pipeline but can teach a bit… isn’t much of a marketing plan.
For most parents, that’s called high school.
Of course there are more average kids than superstars- that’s why they are average. If your contention is that the big middle chunk of the bell curve is going to be attracted to SB when they haven’t been before- I wish you luck.
I am a fan of liberal arts colleges and to watch one close is sad. But peel back the onion, and the well meaning efforts to revive the dead horse seem to be too little too late. AND a fundamental misread of the marketplace for higher education.
The Technion/Cornell affiliation in NYC? That’s a STEM program. The efforts underway at a wide range of flagship U’s to emphasize interdisciplinary science and break down the 1950’s constructs of “Bio, Chem and Physics”? That’s exciting.
Giving jobs to some non-tenure track science professors to lure kids back to rural Virginia with a low cost model?
Namaste.
That does make a lot of sense to me. It’s nice that the SB women are rallying to save their school, but honestly I think once a school announces a closure like this it’s basically over. Even if they could go to court and force the school to stay open with a restraining order how many students would apply? How many would even apply? Would anyone here invest money in a moribund company that is entering bankruptcy just because someone decided to sue them?
I’m not sure they would survive even if they cudged together a mediocre STEM program. I love science and math, but just because there is a high demand for a STEM program that doesn’t mean that that every school with a STEM program is viable.
There is a high demand for fast/casual restaurants like Chipotle but that doesn’t mean that restaurants can never fail. All of that stuff about how nice the neighborhood/environment is and how great horses are is all true, but again that doesn’t mean that every school with horses or every school in a picturesque location is economically viable.
They could reposition SBC as an all-female boarding school (mostly for internationals, I reckon).
They’ll have some faculty there with few better options.
How about University of Mary Washington: Sweet Briar campus.
That’s a great letter. Very on point.