Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[Anselm]

My community college is asking for volunteers.  Last week I saw administrators spooning out food onto plates in the cafeteria.    I refuse to volunteer for several reasons but mostly because I am just too busy.  They are also serving food on styrofoam plates due to a lack of dishwashers.   It never occurs to them to actually raise wages.

[Hibush]

My community college is asking for volunteers.  Last week I saw administrators spooning out food onto plates in the cafeteria.    I refuse to volunteer for several reasons but mostly because I am just too busy.  They are also serving food on styrofoam plates due to a lack of dishwashers.   It never occurs to them to actually raise wages.

Are they providing more value to the institution as lunch servers than doing whatever is going undone in the admin building?

[Anselm]

My community college is asking for volunteers.  Last week I saw administrators spooning out food onto plates in the cafeteria.    I refuse to volunteer for several reasons but mostly because I am just too busy.  They are also serving food on styrofoam plates due to a lack of dishwashers.   It never occurs to them to actually raise wages.

Are they providing more value to the institution as lunch servers than doing whatever is going undone in the admin building?

I am posting here in my office so I must be very careful in how I reply.

I did ask one of them if they had been demoted.

[Hibush]

My community college is asking for volunteers.  Last week I saw administrators spooning out food onto plates in the cafeteria.    I refuse to volunteer for several reasons but mostly because I am just too busy.  They are also serving food on styrofoam plates due to a lack of dishwashers.   It never occurs to them to actually raise wages.

Are they providing more value to the institution as lunch servers than doing whatever is going undone in the admin building?

I am posting here in my office so I must be very careful in how I reply.

I did ask one of them if they had been demoted.

Are they demonstrating vigorous self-demotion in order to set an example for the faculty?

This management approach is novel to me, so sorry if my questions seem naive.

[mamselle]

It's one thing for EAs to be asked to contribute to a sudden "all-hands-on-deck" need that has just arisen or is larger than the usual affair run by the caterers, etc.

It's another to have that expectation hanging over your head all the time you're trying to set up course shells, edit class syllabi, prep article submissions, and do all the nitty-gritty student onboarding and admin tasks that come up every day as well.

So, most EAs would do quiet walk-backs after the first such request, just to preserve their sanity.

One gets pretty good at it.

M.

[bio-nonymous]

Look, bosses do what bosses do, for better and for worse. But the mess duty is voluntary man! That can't be demeaning. If it is, don't do it.

By and large, I don't think they are.

More importantly, dumb ideas get bad P.R.

HA! I don't have enough hours in the day to even get my own job done, much less take on bussing tables for free as a side-hustle...

So don't do it!

Obviously.

[spork]

Chatfield College in Ohio will close in December. Trustees and administration should have shut the place down at the end of the spring semester at the latest, but they decided it was better to be completely irresponsible.

There are several colleges in upstate New York that are on thin ice.

[lightning]

Chatfield College in Ohio will close in December. Trustees and administration should have shut the place down at the end of the spring semester at the latest, but they decided it was better to be completely irresponsible.

There are several colleges in upstate New York that are on thin ice.

Isn't Chatfield one of those rare bird private 2-year liberal arts colleges? I'm surprised that Chatfield lasted as long as it did.

[selecter]

I'm wondering which Upstate NY schools you think are on the thin(nest) ice. Potsdam is swirling I think, and I can think of one other that seems somewhere on the other side of Dire. Articles? Links?

[Hibush]

I'm wondering which Upstate NY schools you think are on the thin(nest) ice. Potsdam is swirling I think, and I can think of one other that seems somewhere on the other side of Dire. Articles? Links?

Forbes has one for private schools. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2022/06/09/the-strongest-and-weakest-colleges-in-america---behind-forbes-2022-financial-grades/

Here are some from that region (you can sort by state).
While Potsdam is public, neighbor Clarkson looks ill.
Spork will note that Wells is missing from the list.
Hamilton     A+
Vassar        A+
Colgate        A+
Union        A
Rochester      A-
Skidmore     A-
Rochester IT   B+
Syracuse        B
Alfred        B
Houghton     B-
Le Moyne     B-
St John Fisher  C+
D'Youville     C+
Ursinus        C+
Ithaca        C+
Rensselaer Poly C+
Nazareth        C+
Sarah Lawrence  C
Siena        C-
Paul Smiths    C-
Canisius        C-
Utica        C-
Roberts Wesleyan C-
Medaille        D
Clarkson       D
Saint Rose      D
Cazenovia      D
Sage Colleges   D
Keuka           D
Elmira        D

[spork]

Notre Dame of Maryland University will become a co-ed institution because of financial problems. It ran deficits in FYs 2017-2019, balanced its budget in FY 2020 only because of $3.5 million in asset sales and in FY 2021 only because of federal stimulus money.

[Wahoo Redux]

I'm wondering which Upstate NY schools you think are on the thin(nest) ice. Potsdam is swirling I think, and I can think of one other that seems somewhere on the other side of Dire. Articles? Links?

Forbes has one for private schools. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2022/06/09/the-strongest-and-weakest-colleges-in-america---behind-forbes-2022-financial-grades/

Sigh.  One of these colleges in the "C" range has a job opening that I am planning on applying to.

Anybody have any insight into the accuracy of the Forbes review?  Probably like most people, I am familiar with a handful of these schools.  Some that I know of make sense for their grade, but one that I know about is on solid financial footing, at least as far as I know.

[Hibush]

Sigh.  One of these colleges in the "C" range has a job opening that I am planning on applying to.

Anybody have any insight into the accuracy of the Forbes review?  Probably like most people, I am familiar with a handful of these schools.  Some that I know of make sense for their grade, but one that I know about is on solid financial footing, at least as far as I know.

The Forbes ratings are rough, like any alt metric. In the C range we have a real mix.  Sarah Lawrence I suspect would be rescued by even more ardent alumnae than Sweet Briar shoud things get tough. Ithaca was nationally notable for streamlining the offerings and making 118 faculty redundant in the process. That may have fixed their near-term finances. RPI's fabulously overcompensated president has not been the rainmaker they pay for recently. Paul Smiths rejected becoming a wealthy woman's poodle, but that may have dire financial consequences since it is a tiny and remote school. St John Fisher got some bad press when they withdrew a faculty offer because the candidate asked for a bit more salary--which is not something a fiscally sound school would do.

These observations are mostly from morbid fascination with reading news reports of schools messing up.

[glowdart]

I'm wondering which Upstate NY schools you think are on the thin(nest) ice. Potsdam is swirling I think, and I can think of one other that seems somewhere on the other side of Dire. Articles? Links?

Forbes has one for private schools. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2022/06/09/the-strongest-and-weakest-colleges-in-america---behind-forbes-2022-financial-grades/

Sigh.  One of these colleges in the "C" range has a job opening that I am planning on applying to.

Anybody have any insight into the accuracy of the Forbes review?  Probably like most people, I am familiar with a handful of these schools.  Some that I know of make sense for their grade, but one that I know about is on solid financial footing, at least as far as I know.

Covid cost us our ranking in that list, which was always impacted by our high percentage of operating budget coming from tuition, but we have had strong enrollment numbers since the 2020 fall small class. Some of the D schools near us are hemorrhaging staff and faculty —and we keep hiring their staff. I'm unsure how some of them are still operational.

[selecter]

I've got some detailed knowledge of some of the schools in the last half of the list, and I'll have to look up the Forbes methodology, but from a glimpse I'd say the list is a bit scattershot and is lagging reality, but isn't fiction. Some schools are flattered by the list, and others are punished for out-of-date info. IMO, Paul Smith's is worse than that C-, and Keuka is likely worse than that D, and St. John Fisher is on firm footing.