OT - Syracuse making major academic program cuts

[Chuck]

Last couple days we've seen a couple of Massachusetts schools announce closures.

This one didn't surprise anyone really, but given the alumni the school has produced and previous efforts to save it, it's pretty sad to see this experiment in education end: https://www.masslive.com/education/...close-after-years-of-financial-struggles.html

Hampshire College is closing.

Just as an FYI, we dropped by last year with my High School senior, and she applied to the school. But the more information we gathered, we were right to get the tenor of the place from students and staffers. Once a school begins having trouble, parents & prospective students get worried. Only half the standard class that Hampshire was expecting ended up enrolling. I tie this directly to the rumor mill and the negative news coming from people in the know on that campus. Hampshire was well regarded as a place for creative types -- writers, filmmakers, researchers -- for decades. Now it's gone.

Some schools that compete for the same students may be strengthened by this (Bard College?), but it's a bad signal.

I say this because schools like Syracuse that are struggling to fill their classes have become national stories and parents are well aware that things are becoming more dire. It's a self-sustaining phenomenon once the fear sets in. Kind of like basketball recruiting.

I note that some Big East schools are having extreme difficulties. Keep an eye on Xavier. You can't miss that much and have a 90% admissions rate with barely any yield at all and still expect parents to shell out tuition.

I see flashing red alarms. For some schools it's not a matter of whether they can pay NIL but rather whether they will continue to function as anything but specialized universities.

Hampshire has been an issue for a long time. Bennington is another one that always seems to be on the precipice. Add Drew University in NJ. Ithaca looked like it was starting that death spiral, but they have an okay endowment and maybe they can come out of it. There are plenty of others that will fail, and probably should.

As you know, Upstater, I have kids at LACs. Both are funded enough to at least provide a great education to my kids for the next couple years. After that will be interesting. Both give out good financial aid and one gives out good merit aid, but that, of course, impacts their bottom line. Interestingly, both are growing which I was surprised by. I wonder if they've determined that even small schools should be of a certain size to get efficiencies.

I think LACs do a bad job marketing how cheap they can be for a lot of kids. One of the schools charges no tuition for families making less than $200k.

 

[upstater]

Hampshire has been an issue for a long time. Bennington is another one that always seems to be on the precipice. Add Drew University in NJ. Ithaca looked like it was starting that death spiral, but they have an okay endowment and maybe they can come out of it. There are plenty of others that will fail, and probably should.

As you know, Upstater, I have kids at LACs. Both are funded enough to at least provide a great education to my kids for the next couple years. After that will be interesting. Both give out good financial aid and one gives out good merit aid, but that, of course, impacts their bottom line. Interestingly, both are growing which I was surprised by. I wonder if they've determined that even small schools should be of a certain size to get efficiencies.

I think LACs do a bad job marketing how cheap they can be for a lot of kids. One of the schools charges no tuition for families making less than $200k.

Because many kids get crowded out of the top schools (Ivy and Ivy adjacent) by the fact that they haven't added seats in many generations, the next tier of LACs get a huge influx of students who could or would otherwise be Ivy bound. So the Demo cliff doesnt impact them.

It's the next tier privates that are some risk and then the small colleges like Anna Maria who are at grave risk.

You're right about Hampshire but I would have thought the institutional support plus alumni could've saved what is, in my mind, a hugely important experiment in education.

Especially with AI now, we need to consider what Hampshire was doing (self-directed research interests plus NO GRADES). This is what the future should look like for all of Higher Ed. But here we are shutting down the only thing that makes sense anymore.

 

[upstater]

-> Anna Maria College, a small Catholic college in Central Massachusetts, may not have “sufficient resources” to sustain operations and enroll students through the next academic year, state officials announced on April 10.

The notice from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education — a last-ditch warning of financial risk at colleges — indicates that the school is low on funds to survive the next 18 months. <-

Yes, this is the second one I was referencing.

 

[ItsNotSo]

SU has a high sticker price but I can’t imagine anyone paying full price. With merit dollars tuition likely comes in around $55k (and that’s non need based).