The Atlantic article: What It's Like When Your College Shuts Down

[polly_mer]

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/06/what-its-like-when-your-college-shuts-down/591862/

The article is schmaltzy in places, but has some good statistics and perspective on the state of small, indistinguishable institutions that have problems with the fixed costs of remaining open that don't scale well with number of students.

[Trogdor]

I wonder what happens to the faculty. What are the outcomes for them? Is there a stigma attached to being a faculty member at one of these places? Are they eagerly hired by other colleges looking for experienced professors?

And what happens to the towns they are in? Do real estate prices crash, as all the faculty sell their houses at once? I can imagine the economic impact on some of the rural college towns must be devestating. It's like a factory closing.

I'd love to hear from any who've actually been through a closure like this.

[polly_mer]

Are they eagerly hired by other colleges looking for experienced professors?

My bet is the "eagerly hired" is mostly restricted to other places that are circling the drain and thus have a revolving door of faculty. 

After all, the institutions we're talking about have at best regional reputations and probably not particularly good ones.  The actions taken prior to shutting down often include lowering standards on students admitted and changing general education requirements to be less rigorous.  The people who can get other faculty jobs at more desirable institution probably left before the doors closed or were recent enough hires that they don't have roots in the community.  These institutions generally aren't known for their research productivity, funded grant activity, or graduate student mentoring.

As was remarked upon in a different thread recently, if the national pools for some fields are so deep with highly qualified people, why would anyone be hiring marginal applicants?  At a healthy institution, experience will matter, but often that experience is going to include recent experience doing things that faculty members generally haven't been doing at the institution that is circling the drain.

At Super Dinky College, we did get an opportunity hire when an institution an hour away closed, but that was in a small field where we'd been kicking around the idea of hiring a full-time person because the major had grown past the point where a handful of adjuncts were sufficient.  Most of the faculty were out of luck, though, because most of the people newly out of jobs are in fields where there's little shortage of good enough applicants and people don't tend to leave those jobs very frequently.

[downer]

This CHE article is behind a paywall. But it addresses the issues raised.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-on-Long-Island/245949

[marshwiggle]

This CHE article is behind a paywall. But it addresses the issues raised.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-on-Long-Island/245949

At the end of that article, there's a fascinating table. It shows the number of students and faculty at each place that closed. The student to faculty ratios are all over the place. But some of the more amazing ones are:

• Burlington College (152/120)
• Colorado Heights (103/61)
• Dowling College(2256/580)

How can you possibly run a place with such extreme ratios? In the first two cases, you need each student to cover more than 1/2 of a faculty member's salary plus all of the overhead per student!!

I can't imagine how such a place would be sustainable, unless it only caters to the insanely rich.

[downer]

Those figures may not distinguish between full time faculty and part time faculty. For the part time faculty included, they may not even work every semester, and sometimes figures can include people who haven't worked for some time. So the figures may not be very accurate.

[spork]

Newbury College's FTE undergraduate enrollment decreased by 35 percent from FY 2012 to FY 2017. If one divides total annual expenses by the FTE undergraduate enrollment, that ratio increased by almost 50 percent over the same period. It's literally surrounded by other colleges and universities within a five mile radius. The school was obviously headed toward closure. A lot of people were in denial.