Students Going From Closing Institution to Closing Institution

[marshwiggle]

One of my colleagues works at a SLAC that has itself been benefiting from absorbing students from closed SLACs. At times, up to 10% of the student population has been made up of refugees from recently closed universities.

This has been very good for business at my colleague's SLAC. Revenues and enrollments are robust and healthy.

I am not sure how sustainable this economic model is, as I keep thinking that eventually one might run out of SLACs. But I also suppose that the students are still around, and they have to go college somewhere.

We live on this hope and dream (and sometimes reality) too.  I'm shocked we haven't just listed this in our strategic plan formally.

That's us.  I've actually posted that before.  We have several SLACs in the neighborhood which are getting to the tipping point.  They draw from exactly the same student pool.

What's too bad is that some students, for whatever reason rightly or wrongly, want these small campuses. 

Unless they all close at once, the number needed to supported the students who want that experience should survive as the student population concentrates at them so that they have sufficient enrollment.

[polly_mer]

The problem with a scenario that involves outrunning the pack for now as the bear takes the hindmost is you don't get the best of the best as the survivor; you get the luckiest in terms of relative position when the bear showed up.

I have a lot of love for small campuses.  My annoyance is exactly that somehow SD outlived arguably better places in part because smart people closed those other places gracefully instead of waiting until the checks started bouncing.

In a coordinated world, the tiny campuses who are ripping people off would close first and redistribute students and faculty to better places and then some good small places would survive.

US higher ed continues on a track with a big split for elite education (possible at a smaller place like Grinnell), good-enough-yet-crowded-with-the-masses regional comprehensives, and expensive-for-what-you-get ripoffs.

Marshwiggle had it right that the system didn't rejigger for what current students need.

[apl68]

Super Dinky bragged around 2015 for getting 10 desktop computers in the library with printing available. Prior to that time, there was no computer lab for students and never had been.

Likewise, it was a huge deal when SD got five brand-new Macs with licenses for graphics design software for a new course in art in 2016.  The regional comprehensive university within an easy drive for much less direct tuition cost has an entire graphics design program with a much larger lab and a note that most students in the program purchase laptops and then discounted-through-the-university software licenses.  25+ years ago, my alma mater had multiple computer labs for various purposes and that wasn't rare during my college search and tours.

In 2012, Super Dinky was completing conversion from a physical card catalog in the library to an electronic one.  SD was not the last in the region to make that conversion.

Wow.  My alma mater--not a particularly large or wealthy school--was doing all this in the late 1980s.  It's astonishing to hear just how threadbare some of these little colleges have been for so long.

[apl68]

Plenty of valid points above about how the current situation is in many ways harder for colleges to survive than the Great Depression was.  But it doesn't really answer my question about what the failure rate of colleges was during the Depression.  Surely somebody, somewhere has compiled figures about it.

[Caracal]

Plenty of valid points above about how the current situation is in many ways harder for colleges to survive than the Great Depression was.  But it doesn't really answer my question about what the failure rate of colleges was during the Depression.  Surely somebody, somewhere has compiled figures about it.

I found this.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Bad-Old-Days-Higher-Ed/44526

She doesn't cite specific figures but says that the number of closures was small.

It has to be said that the number of closures remains pretty small. As the article below points out, fewer colleges closed in the early 2000s, but the number for this decade has been pretty similar to the overall trend of the last 50 years, it hasn't reached some huge unprecedented level in this decade
https://www.higheredtoday.org/2019/09/23/colleges-closing-spoiler-alert-probably-not/

I suppose it is possible that the current situation is actually going to result in a huge wave of college closures, but it also seems possible that it will just lead to a fairly small spike involving schools that might have been able to limp on for a few more years.

[Anselm]

My cynical view that for some students the financial health of the school does not matter.  They are going there to play a sport.

[apl68]

I wouldn't think that most prospective students would think to wonder about a school's solvency in the first place.  The average person seems to think of colleges as very stable institutions that have sort of always been there and presumably always will be.  That perception is probably only just starting to change.

[namazu]

I wouldn't think that most prospective students would think to wonder about a school's solvency in the first place.  The average person seems to think of colleges as very stable institutions that have sort of always been there and presumably always will be.  That perception is probably only just starting to change.

This is my take, too.

[TreadingLife]

I wouldn't think that most prospective students would think to wonder about a school's solvency in the first place.  The average person seems to think of colleges as very stable institutions that have sort of always been there and presumably always will be.  That perception is probably only just starting to change.

This is my take, too.

Two years ago a prospective student's parent asked about the size and health of our endowment during a panel session for parents. I thought that was pretty prescient to be asking about back then. Our endowment is fine (then and for now). It is our trends in net tuition revenue and the discount rate that are concerning. Good thing he didn't ask pointed questions about them! <insert nervous laughter>

[Wahoo Redux]

I wouldn't think that most prospective students would think to wonder about a school's solvency in the first place.  The average person seems to think of colleges as very stable institutions that have sort of always been there and presumably always will be.  That perception is probably only just starting to change.

This is my take, too.

Americans take education for granted.  I've said that a number of times on these very boards.  That's how one loses things too.