@basil1 have there been any releases from the school assuring alumnae and prospective transfers/ freshmen that the school is still financially viable in the short and long term?
Who’s next?
Find some small LAC in Bain’s “tuition dependent private” bucket whose USNWR ranking is dropping like a stone. SBC went from 68 to 116 in ten years.
Bang on the USNWR rankings as much as you want. But they do measure things that are relevant indicators – freshman retention rates, graduation rates, admissions selectivity. SBC had all those things going the wrong way, which was captured in the overall ranking drop.
Just based on gut feel from visits and nothing more, Mt Holyoke seemed like the weakest of the “4 biggies” in women’s colleges (Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt Holyoke). It just didn’t seem as big-league as the other 3.
I have worked in the higher ed “biz” for many years in many different positions and with several institutions of various scope and size. I am incredibly sympathetic to the Sweet Briar community on what I am sure feels like a tragic loss. I am particularly sad for the current students, whose college years will now take a very different shape than they must have imagined.
Several years ago I worked on a confidential project related to the poor financial position of a women’s college (not SBC), trying to determine the best next steps for the institution. Economic challenges are coming to a head for many small liberal arts colleges and private universities, but I believe especially so for single-sex institutions and those in rural locations. While schools like SBC have ~$94M endowments, they are truly tuition-dependent institutions. Declining interest coupled with rising tuition discounting has created a monster from which, without alternative revenue streams, there are no ways “back” to solid economic footing.
Many have questioned why community members weren’t previously informed of the school’s problematic financial standing and others have questioned whether the leadership was committed to the institution’s future. While I have no insider knowledge of the SBC situation, I’ve talked confidentially with Board of Trustees members of institutions that have made drastic, and unpopular, changes before. I don’t doubt they are acting in what they believe is the most informed and best choice for the institution and its community members in the long haul and all I spoke with felt the gravity of their decision-making and made such moves after only careful deliberation.
As to the question of whether the school could have made its decision public with a larger time frame before closing, in my professional opinion, the answer is no. If the school were to make known that it was going to close, it would most likely fail to enroll any new students, lose a large majority of current students (what parents are going to continue to send their child to a school that is closing, save some rising seniors?), and the operational costs would still be the same, leaving them in an even worse financial position. Unfortunately BOTs have a fiduciary responsibility to the endowments with which they are entrusted. Spending down the endowment, to keep the school afloat for one more year, would be irresponsible. It also would mean that a very small number (what, in this case, 200? not even 200?) of students would still need to be serviced and plant costs (even if buildings were closed, for example) would continue.
The timing to me suggests that the BOT was hoping that admissions figures could possibly enable them to stay open longer. Most institutions know the bulk of their applicant pool – and expected enrollment/net tuition revenue – by late February. I assume the February 28 BOT meeting was likely at the point at which admissions personnel determined what the NTR for the following year would likely be and the BOT felt that there was no choice any longer. From my experience, I am guessing the BOT has been for more than a year, if not years, trying to tackle this problem and was holding out a final hope to see if anything would change in terms of revenue. Unfortunately, short of being absorbed by another institution (which is difficult given its location), there were few options for SBC. Salvos that might work for other schools (master’s/professional degrees/continuing ed/‘returner student’/adult ed programs/online programs) are either unfeasible given SBC’s location in rural Virginia (no population base) or require a lot of time and money to implement. Contrary to what you might read in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, online education, for example, can be very costly to develop and requires at least a year or more lead-time to build out.
The question about going co-ed is an interesting one, but unfortunately I don’t have a sense that it would have “saved” SBC. Tuition-dependent institutions without alternative revenue streams (assuming that “traditional undergrad” = “traditional revenue stream”) must differentiate themselves on something other than cost in order to be sustainable financially. Whether that’s prestige (of which US News & World Report is a good proxy but not perfect), location, special program that is truly unique and well-recognized, special interest appeal/niche (religion for example), athletics program, or something else, it cannot be cost unless the scale of the institution is such that it can accommodate such a large number of students that the overall NTR is sustainable. SBC’s differentiator (if we’re going to boil it down to that) was single-sex education, strong “community feeling” (from what I know), and rural location. Unfortunately, SBC’s differentiator was no longer attracting students to enroll. Going co-ed just makes SBC “another rural small college,” would result in them losing the students attracted to what made them “unique” before, would cost them $$ (build-out and the heavy discounting to attract men), and, if it even worked in that they were able to somehow reinvent themselves in some way, would probably not result in economic sustainability for at least a decade, if not longer. All the while they would be spending down their endowment to accomplish this and risk issues with their creditors and any debt they carried.
I know my thoughts don’t mean much to the students, staff, faculty, and alumnae who are heartbroken right now, and I hope this doesn’t come across as a defense of what has occurred. More, I just thought you might be interested in the perspective of someone who has worked in higher education and on these issues before at other institutions.
@whenwhen Here is what Stephens posted on FB: “We were saddened by yesterday’s news that Sweet Briar College is closing. We’re thankful Stephens remains strong - and hope current Sweet Briar students consider another women’s college. If you know students impacted by this decision, encourage them to consider Stephens. https://www.stephens.edu/a…/undergraduate/transfer-students/”
Stephens went through a couple of bad years, they had to sell off a lot of property but it appears to be financially solvent now. Stephens is also a relatively good deal at “only” 34,943-$40,178 a year…
A very close friend is a trustee of a women’s college, one mentioned positively in this thread for having adapted to changing times more successfully than Sweet Briar. My friend is very concerned for the future of her institution; she thinks and worries about it all the time. I don’t know that she would disagree with Sweet Briar’s president about the prospects for women’s colleges over the next generation.
Stephens College is the 2nd oldest women’s college in the United states.
If there is a story there is that it will be increasingly difficult for schools to compete when they:
- Have to accept more than 80% of fewer than 1,000 applicants
2 Have no gender diversity
- Have to "buy" enrollment with generous aid but are unwilling to do so in meaningful terms, and end up with
- an enrollment of about 200 fresh(wo)men with
- very low admissions 'statistics.'
All in all, it takes a lot more than 94,000,000 in restrictive endowments to retain what is considered as prestige in 2015. Simply stated there is simply not enough interest in artificially keeping Sweet Briar alive. The school more than probably decided that it was best to divide what was left of the cake to take care of its … insiders. Other schools did not fare as well when the marketplace voted with its feet.
You got to feel for the students who made a choice that was different from the 70 percent or more who were smart enough to decline the offer of admissions. But the writing had been on the walls since 2008. Hard to believe that any current student might have missed the signs of an imminent collapse.
@intparent: You can take a horse to college, but you can’t make it think.
^ Good one!
Ripon, Knox, Coe, Cornell, Monmouth in the Midwest are likely on the bubble.
I think that the list of colleges that are facing a bleak future is very extensive. Consider what a school with a 1B endowment has tried in the past years, and you might understand that schools with a lesser name and wallet must go through:
Without inflation since 2009, the above means that Smith spends close to $200,000 to graduate one of its students. The cost to do the “same” between the CC and Amherst would be less than $60,000. If the job prospects for most graduates fall in a narrow range of possibilities, it does become harder and harder to justify the added expenses.
One way might be to start looking at schools taking advantage of their superior faculty and residential system to compete with a THREE years degree, based on the expectation of higher productivity from both teachers and students. A motto could be 'We do more in less time for more money." For what it is worth, the AP boondoggle is NOT the answer to a shorter degree. Nor are large classes with peer teaching as we are talking about bona fide tertiary education provided by teachers, and not glorified high schools courses or TA Mardi Gras acts.
@xiggi, the 3 year degree is a possible model for some LACs, but only those already with a sufficiently strong acceptance rate (taking in less than 1/3rd of applicants) as the school would have to take in a third more applicants (who would be lesser-qualified than the students they admit now) in order to make the numbers.
My D considered Hollins due to the horse program. For her bringing her horse was her top requirements for a school. Fortunately once you begin to look the number of schools that have on campus barns is fairly large. There is no good way for a school to do this.
Any opinions on New School of Florida? My nephew is seriously considering it. I wonder how a school gets by with so few students.
So I just looked it up—last year’s yield rate for SBC was pretty much equivalent to that of Bard and Macalester. I really do wish we knew what it was shaping up to be this year, then.
Re Bard and its limited endowment, their biggest risk factor is that the college is almost completely indistinguishable from Leon Botstein, who has been president since I was in high school in the late seventies!
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/pictures-institution
I work in development, and I’m not sure there’s a hard and fast rule in that regard. A lot of times there’s more than just one connection to an institution. For example, a Penn grad from the 1920s may have had a son who graduated in the 1950s and married a Bryn Mawr grad (whose dad had gone to Wharton and mom had gone to Bryn Mawr), and so forth. The more connections, the more money is typically raised. And it also depends on whether or not the woman brought a lot of wealth and connections to the marriage and whether or not the next generation is interested in the school.
@whenhen I was doing some research on Washburn in Kansas that you mentioned. I may be looking at the wrong institution but what I see is that Washburn is a public university. Is there another Washburn to which you refer?
@pizzagirl I get where you may have that impression. Out of the sisters MHC has a slightly higher admit rate and slightly lower yield. But to counteract those facts MHC has a higher % of international students, this works in MHC favor by introducing diversity and enrolling more full pay students. I think. ( no hard evidence) that MHC may actually have more appeal outside the USA as it’s less “feminist hard line” than smith or BMC. However W cross regerstration with MIT plays well internationally as does B Columbia affliation.
Even so MHCs rep as the kinder gentler sister puts it head and shoulders above other competing LACs like bard hamphire Bennington etc.
Yield does indeed indicate a level of preference but it does not always offer valid comparisons. Just think how high yields are the domain of HYPS and … Nebraska; Tulane has lowish yields.
One has to look at the admission rate as well as the volume of applications generated by a college. The yield at Sweet Briar was low but it also came from a small pool of applicants and a pool of admitted students that represented 4 of each applicant. In so many words, the problems stemmed from being unable to attract more than 200 students from a pool of two or three times what it was in the end.
Macalester and Bard attract a much larger pool of applicants.
Possibly yes, but not necessarily true in all cases:
Four year school
Applicants 6,000
Admit 1/5 1200
Yield 1/4 300 enrolled
Campus: 1200
More students might think a 3 years deal is feasible financially and be swayed after admission (higher yield)
Three Year School
Applicants 6,000
Admit 1/5 1200
Yield 1/3 400 enrolled
Campus 1200
More students might apply because the path is shorter and they get the education
Three Year School
Applicants 8,000
Admit 1/5 1600
Yield 1/4 400 enrolled
Campus 1200
PS Fwiw, one could also review the value of … studying abroad. How many students are there who go abroad for 1/2, a full year, or even more to attend a range of schools that might not exactly be chose for academic progress. In almost all cases, there is little reason to believe that an stronger three years would not offer a better value and a better curriculum than the leisure-filled four to six years in the current scenario.
Europe through its Bologna agreement seemed to have thought that a 3+2 made just as much sense as a 4+1. All that is needed a higher expectation in performance from faculty and students. Something that is perhaps not what is demanded in the US.