^Agreed. I hope the Saving Sweet Briar folks can put their emotions aside and really try to understand everything in the letter. It would be a shame to force the college to stay open and “spend every last dollar” as the letter states. It’s fairly telling, to me, that Saving Sweet Briar has only raised 3.3 million (in pledges, not cash) to date. That’s not nearly enough and I’d be surprised if much more is coming.
“It’s fairly telling, to me, that Saving Sweet Briar has only raised 3.3 million (in pledges, not cash) to date.”
Exactly. The president said they needed cash infusions in the eight figures annually. This isn’t even enough to keep it open one more year. I hope that this confirms to the alumnae that there wasn’t any outpouring of donor millions waiting in the wings if SBC had only asked for it.
I find this thread very interesting because a lot has been said and fact checking lacking. I think the Amherst county attorney case will raise additional questions and maybe a different line of thinking. SBC actually has had a net gain in the endowment this past year, plus their assests have increased.?
I don’t have a dog in this hunt but it maybe a caution to those non-profit givers to know how their gifts are being used by the entity they are giving to.
We can safely assume that the BOT and the administrators know more about their own endowment and financial needs that some investigative journalist. It is not so much about “facts” finding than it is about understanding the deeper impacts of restrictions on endowment conversions and the need for … real spendable dollars.
So Blossom, we’ll take off the mailing list. They dont need 5000 students. 500 would be fine over a few years. Antioch is rebuilding with a few hundred on a rundown campus in tiny Yellow Springs Ohio. I have been there and SBC compares quite favorably. You start small and low cost. With most undergrad students being taught by underpaid part-timers being able to promise dedicated full-time faculty is something most larger schools cannot offer. STEM is just one option. Could be business or arts or computers. My points about the UW schools is that they can get good low cost faculty with good student outcomes and have a total cost model well under $15K per head all in plus R&B.
Finding 200 gullible students by offering free tuition is a lot easier than finding 500 to 1,000 of them who can afford to pay tuition. Raising 50 million from nostalgic lunatics is a lot easier than repeating the feat several times to pay for the cost of building a bona fide curriculum and housing students with a modicum of comfort.
It seems that the type of students SBC had been trying to land in terms of SES status is not exactly the type that was attracted by the rebirth of Antioch. I happen to think that it is more Prada than Birkenstock!
But power to them if they somehow pull it off. The losers will be the kids who drink that type of KoolAid.
Why are you set on throwing good money after bad, Barrons? Accept it. Lynchburg VA just ain’t all that compelling of an area to most people and a single sex draw makes it more so. You’ve either got to be uber-top to be a women’s college these days, or go home. Why does this upset you so?
There have undoubtedly been dozens or even hundreds of other businesses in the region that have closed at times. I think some may be interpreting the closure of Sweet Briar as some kind of indictment on Lynchburg or the surrounding community. The fact is that not all businesses and not all not-for-profits will survive indefinitely.
Sweet Briar isn’t just competing with giant schools with underpaid part-timers though. There are plenty of other women’s colleges, plenty of other colleges in picturesque locations, plenty of other small liberal arts colleges, plenty of other colleges with top-tier STEM programs taught by dedicated full-time faculty. I think your arguments would be very compelling if future students forced to choose between Sweet Briar and some large school, but I’m not convinced that this is the case.
Given two comparable schools though, are students going to choose a school whose closure was only halted by a restraining order OR a school that isn’t teetering on the brink? I think SB could survive in theory but just developing a STEM program doesn’t sound like enough since there are so many other similar schools out there that aren’t collapsing. I could be wrong though.
I think SB could survive in theory …
But does it deserve the survive in practice? Many people lament the fact that older institutions fall in disrepair and that cities that once were popular have fallen into neglect. While the observers have a point on the emotional side, the Darwinists look at it differently. Yes, it is a shame that SBC will vanish --if not in 2015, it will be in the future-- but would our education system, and especially the private one, be poorer for it? Where could the 158 fresh(wo)men having gone it SBC had closed in 2013? More than probably in a less toxic place. After all, there are all-women colleges that offer a superior education and a much more selective environment. And, considering the remaining low level of applications, plenty of choices at all levels of selectivity. And this assumes that the choice is only among non-coed schools!
The reality is pretty simple. SBC is where it is because of the choices it has made in the past. Their decision to close early is a continuation of the model that has mostly benefitted the insiders, and allowed them to pursue a lifestyle that is no longer compatible with the financial means of the … customers. Clinging to an anachronistic model and imbalance of faculty size and customers can only last that long.
The insiders now will divide the soufflé and the fancy pies after having splurged on a banquet of excesses. Whatever can be negotiated will mostly pay for severance pays and relocation costs. The students will probably be --once more-- the victims.
Yet, the closing of the school will accomplish something positive: an end to the cycle that duped naïve families into thinking such a school was a realistic choice in this tougher century. That and the fact that the students who bought into this pipedream will find out that they had and have much better options.
I could see Sweet Briar surviving as a female version of Deep Springs: 2 years, tiny, hugely prestigious, and free, with an ability to transfer fairly easily to the most prestigious 4-yr schools afterwards. But that would require some gazillionaire to virtually buy it and set up a foundation.
That’s a very convincing letter. I think it is very difficult to argue with, assuming that the figures as presented are accurate.
Sweet Brokeback Mountain College?
“The insiders now will divide the soufflé and the fancy pies after having splurged on a banquet of excesses. Whatever can be negotiated will mostly pay for severance pays and relocation costs. The students will probably be --once more-- the victims.”
xiggi - Where, exactly, in all of what has been published to you get the notion that there has been a banquet of excesses? From my reading, it looks to me like there is a strong chance that no one is going to get much of a severance package out of this.
@xiggi, I really think you are being unduly harsh towards the faculty and administration.
I think there’s a different perspective from folks who’ve visited or know something about it, versus those who dismiss it with their sidewise glances and certain assumptions coming through in phrasing.
I personally think SB’s demise began a few decades ago, when they did the very things some are advocating- not to offend anyone, but going more vanilla. The move to add engineering came too late.
In 1991 Kodak, Bethlehem Steel, Westinghouse and Woolworths were part of the Dow Jones index (a group of 30 very large, successful, market leading, valuable public companies). All are now gone and/or bankrupt.
As a single sex school, Sweet Briar lasted longer than 80% of the womens colleges that were around 50 years ago. It happens.
A good beginning would be to compare the ratio of faculty to students. This does not happen overnight. Only the richest and most prestigious schools can afford such ratios, and they have the luxury of turning down people who would jump at the chance to be a full pay student.
As almost everything related to higher education, the primary concern is the well-being of the insiders. There are times when parts of the faculty is not considered an insider, and especially in a world that relies on adjuncts. Obviously, many years of navel gazing and ostrich manners have passed at Sweet Briar. Inasmuch as one cannot blame teachers to be attracted by sweet deals, one can question the continuous expectation that it will last forever and a day.
If there is a message, it is that way too many teachers are clinging to a past filled with plush assignments and unending benefits of tenure. It works as long as the “free” grant money can flow, as long as the mostly useless publishing continues to pay dividends, and as long as one can survive through the generosity of prior generations, or the ability of the future generation to pay for a product that has lost its appeal.
In the case of SBC, it seems that they were going 0 for 4 in the list of survival methods. It lasted as long as it could, and the final chapter will be written in the same manner as it has been done for decades: We took good care of our own until we could no longer afford to do it!
And then there were 43 left.
@xiggi, you apparently think that the faculty at SBC should have committed professional seppuku for the sake of…something. The college did reduce the faculty. What they are selling specifically depends on a low faculty/student ratio. I cannot join you in celebrating an academic system that exists due only to exploitation in the form of adjuncts. In fact, I think that the schools that OUGHT to close are the ones that only survive financially because they rely heavily on adjuncts.
Who said SBC had to stay all female? PG- I live here and as you might have noticed by now enjoy a good discussion. When I have one I bring it. Not personal to me at all. LU adds more students every year than SBC ever had. Lynchburg will be fine either way. But I’ll also point out dubious assumptions by those 1000 miles away.
Consolation–the list of those would be very short for schools with over a few thousand students.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/10/30/for-fewer-adjuncts/
I am afraid that the above hardly represents what I wrote. I do not celebrate a system that exploits adjuncts. I merely pointed out that the tenured faculty has and does not consider the adjuncts as insiders to be protected.
The rest of my posts is pretty clear to follow. Again, I do not blame the faculty for having been attracted by the type of lifestyle offered by SBC. If I did, I would probably spend all day digesting the perennial and continuous abuses and market imbalances in education from elementary all the way to tertiary education. But that will make absolutely no difference as what you call professional seppuku remains a term extremely foreign in education. The opposite is just true: it is all about self-preservation of a few.