Many of you seem to have a good grasp on the finances of LACs, I was wondering if any of you would be willing to go out on a limb and predict 1 or 2 co-ed LACs that might be gone in 5 yrs. It is my understanding that very few people foresaw this for SBC.
Bard
Bard
Taking a quick glance at NACABO’s endowment report on 853 college endowments, it looks like nearly 400 schools have smaller endowments than SBC. Doesn’t mean all or most of them are facing closure in the next decade but it does get you thinking. Of course, endowment size is only one part of the challenge.
I have no idea. It depends so much on whether there are a couple of angel donors that would fly to the rescue. That’s something only college development would know.
I’m wondering something based on a question upthread. Yes, surely some women’s college alumnae are married to rich partners. How does that usually play out in the philanthropic world? How do couples like that choose their causes? Development professionals probably know what the patterns are. I’m on the board of my local Bryn Mawr club, and I have no idea.
A LAC that has an acceptance rate of 50% or below will still be able to meet enrollment targets and get the number of full-pays it needs, so Bard will be fine. Over 2/3rds accepted is danger territory. I’d be more concerned with Sarah Lawrence and Bennington.
I think Wells will be forced to merge with Ithaca or Cornell.
I think they were referring to Bard College at Simon’s Rock, an early entry LAC.
I have my money on some of the Kansas privates, especially Washburn. Expensive, low quality of education, in a declining part of the country, and completely non selective. I doubt they’ll close in the next few years, but in a decade I would be surprised if all of them remained.
I was once curious about this, as I attended a woman’s college undergrad & then worked with someone who attended Wellesley and married a scion, a son of a billionaire New York real estate family. She stopped working once married. He’s now the chancellor of an Ivy & if you google their names, public records of their donations are available. She donates to Wellesley to the tune of low six figures, but it’s just a fraction of what her husband donates to his alma mater.
Oddly enough, of the 4 kids, the first two opted to attend another Ivy; the third was accepted to that Ivy & her father’s alma mater, and chose the latter; the last is still in high school. This is a family that has university schools, hospitals & museum wings named after them…a huge developmental hook for the kids. Two of their kids in college are girls & neither opted to attend Wellesley.
Well, yes. And I think that the likelihood of success would depend significantly on changing the name to something less twee.
@momneeds2no, I’m biased too, as a Wellesley grad. The remaining single-sex Seven Sisters schools were always positioned quite differently from Sweet Briar, as was Vassar. As you indicate, I think. Even so, it took a while for Vassar to be viewed positively by a lot of male students. If it had been named “Daisy Chain College” the task would likely have been insuperable. 
The Bard comment was (kinda) joking. The “Bain report” shows some lack luster indicators which, without context, don’t look too good. But… Let’s consider Bards novel approach to admissions…a ploy to drive up apps, free pr? LACs (at least the forward thinking ones) are seeking methods to differentiate thier “product”.
I wonder… Who are the big players in college-marketing-consulting. And are they hiring?
@whenhen: Kansas is a good example, but you could probably do a similar analysis of most Midwestern states. In my home state (Ohio), the top-tier LACs, such as Oberlin, Kenyon, and Denison have recruited aggressively further afield than they used to and seem to be reasonably healthy.
Some of the others, including a lot that most of y’all have never heard of, are likely to be in a much more precarious state as the college-ready cohort in region flattens out or declines. I’m thinking of places like Marietta, Defiance, Muskingum, Heidelberg, and Wittenberg. Two or three straight years of enrollment decline would probably sink a place like that.
It seems to me that most of the undistinguished regional schools survive by offering a lot of vocational majors and catering to part-time students.
“Two are girls & neither opted to attend Wellesley.”
Well, that’s typical for students who went to college after the coeducation boom of the 1970s. Look at the daughters of famous/proud women’s college graduates like Hillary Clinton, Anna Quindlen, Madeleine Albright (three daughters!), Drew Gilpin Faust, etc. Not many chose women’s colleges.
I wonder what strategies SB considered then rejected and why. Did they hire an admission consultant and marketing firm? Why wS yield plummeting? Is like to see some Monday-morning quarterback discussion surrounding admissions. I know for a fact that some of our public CA state schools use proprietary algorithms to enhance yield. (Completely contrary to mission of public ally funded insitution IMO) I wonder if SB ever
@whenhen I live close to Marietta. They recently laid off some profs as well as staff. There were a lot of alum very angry with that especially since the alum were not notified. I haven’t heard any news recently but I know the school is hurting.
“Did they hire an admission consultant and marketing firm?”
Yes. Multiple consultants. They named them on the conference call, though I didn’t recognize the names. One of them was the former president or provost of U of Puget Sound.
My daughter did look at an all women’s college, but it is part of a consortium. My other daughter, who loves horses, wouldn’t have like SBC either. Neither of my girls was interested is such a small school, such a rural school, and the pool of kids who are interested in such a school is shrinking fast to ‘girls who want to bring their horses to college’.
I read that last year SBC had 605 students enrolled rather than the optimum of 650. Those 45 students and their tuition threw off the budget enough to cause a crisis.
You can take your horse to MHC, too.
@scsiguru with the well publicized layoffs in petroleum engineering (really Marietta’s one program of distinction) and lack of the school’s diversification in other engineering fields, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next few years are even worse than before.
My alma mater Stephens College in Columbia, MO is very similar to Sweet Briar and just put out announcement encouraging Sweet Briar students to consider transferring.