Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[spork]

"Iowa College for the Blind" will sell for $1; lessons for higher ed: https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-Made-Famous-by-the/247526.

[polly_mer]

 Free for now from Twitter:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-Made-Famous-by-the/247526?key=j_DIeWIUtJsVs9ToXQRavvh83tVPGYNCaUUIxDC9NDVzp1-CXwlPSLajLEhQZ1jtdVVTYnF1RGVXTFNNRDlaQkgxSTdHRjFyek5DWk95MnF2VVZ3VFp4S0c0RQ

[Hibush]

"Iowa College for the Blind" will sell for $1; lessons for higher ed: https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-Made-Famous-by-the/247526.

This is just the campus. The school has been closed for years and the buildings mostly vacant.

[apl68]

Free for now from Twitter:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-College-Made-Famous-by-the/247526?key=j_DIeWIUtJsVs9ToXQRavvh83tVPGYNCaUUIxDC9NDVzp1-CXwlPSLajLEhQZ1jtdVVTYnF1RGVXTFNNRDlaQkgxSTdHRjFyek5DWk95MnF2VVZ3VFp4S0c0RQ

Interesting article.

Blind students weren't the only ones who had to leave home and go to a college-like setting to get a solid high school education.  As recently as the 1920s one of my grandfathers had to pay tuition and go to boarding school to get the high school education that wasn't available in his rural area.  He was not by any means from a locally affluent family, but they felt the financial sacrifice was worth it.  My other grandfather grew up in a rural area in the same state, but they had high school by the time he was old enough to attend.

[Hibush]

Blind students weren't the only ones who had to leave home and go to a college-like setting to get a solid high school education.  As recently as the 1920s one of my grandfathers had to pay tuition and go to boarding school to get the high school education that wasn't available in his rural area.  He was not by any means from a locally affluent family, but they felt the financial sacrifice was worth it.  My other grandfather grew up in a rural area in the same state, but they had high school by the time he was old enough to attend.

One hundred years ago, only about 10% of 14-17 year olds were in school. It is not surprising that it would be unavailable to many.

[polly_mer]

Palomar College at 'high risk' of insolvency, state agency finds

[nonntt]

If you're in a position to do something about market failure, why don't you?

As NTT and adjunct faculty, I was not exactly overwhelmed with businesses telling me how much they would love to pay me 6 figures for my skills. I didn't have time to survey all of the 3-6 million available jobs out there, but my experience was something like this:

Jobs I was perfectly qualified for: No, we don't want you.
Alt-ac jobs that I had several importantly qualifications for: Thanks for applying, but we found someone who was a perfect fit.
Other jobs: You don't have 5+ years experience in this niche, so why are you wasting our time?

And so my conclusion, which is probably what a lot of adjuncts are also thinking, is that non-academic jobs won't actually give an application a second glance. This conclusion may well be false, but it's the conclusion that best seems to fit the facts at our disposal.

Now, if you are in fact desperate to hire someone with the skills and experience of a CUNY adjunct, why not invest a little in recruitment? Pay someone on the ground to put up a few flyers? Send out some targeted mails? Hit them up on LinkedIn? If you put the key information - that there's someone who wants to hire them! - in the hands of the people who most need it, maybe something of benefit to all parties will happen.

[polly_mer]

Are you perhaps on the wrong thread?  I'm not at all desperate to hire people who have utterly failed in key areas like showing any evidence of knowing what skills are scarce and acquiring such skills.

We need people with those skills, not those waiting for a personally engraved invitation for skills that are not rare.

[polly_mer]

Bond ratings are slipping for merely elite institutions

Elites include institutions like Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon University; super-elites are institutions like Harvard and Stanford. Cantwell and Taylor found that super-elites spend about $90,000 per year per student. Elites spend about $50,000 per year per student.

Reference: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Chasing-Prestige-Is/247545?key=j_DIeWIUtJsVs9ToXQRavkyiGKCdrSd-fFNBjUfP_Q1MajB6yk2Gua8YVpBVOUIzVTB1V0dlb2RxTlhCSGxhaVdEQ3lfaVFlUm1nOWZid25ialR2X25zS0M2dw

[polly_mer]

Tuition likely to hit six figures soon: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/11/some-colleges-could-soon-cost-100000-year/601648/

[Hibush]

Elites include institutions like Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon University; super-elites are institutions like Harvard and Stanford. Cantwell and Taylor found that super-elites spend about $90,000 per year per student. Elites spend about $50,000 per year per student.

This datum explains clearly why Oxy could not provide an elite $50,000 education with the new

admission strategy of recruiting low-income, first generation minority students by giving them generous scholarships and tuition discount.

Their net tuition, not surprisingly, came in below the very challenging $50,000.

[polly_mer]

https://www.workdayminnesota.org/wage-theft-at-minnesota-state-campuses-could-lead-to-over-2-million-in-claims/

[picard]

An article which profiles four SLACs: St Johns (MD), Hiram (OH), Hampshire, and Mills College and their strategies to reinvent themselves amid the challenging enrollment and financial pictures affecting many small liberal arts colleges nowadays"

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-4-small-liberal-arts-colleges-are-changing-with-the-times/566424

[spork]

An article which profiles four SLACs: St Johns (MD), Hiram (OH), Hampshire, and Mills College and their strategies to reinvent themselves amid the challenging enrollment and financial pictures affecting many small liberal arts colleges nowadays"

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-4-small-liberal-arts-colleges-are-changing-with-the-times/566424

According to its Form 990s, Mills College had a deficit of $8.9 million for FY 2018, after only $700,000 in positive net revenue for FY 2017. FTE undergraduate enrollment was still falling as of 2018. I doubt that its plan for reinvention is going to succeed. I think the most likely outcome is that it gets acquired by UC Berkeley.

[Hibush]

An article which profiles four SLACs: St Johns (MD), Hiram (OH), Hampshire, and Mills College and their strategies to reinvent themselves amid the challenging enrollment and financial pictures affecting many small liberal arts colleges nowadays"

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-4-small-liberal-arts-colleges-are-changing-with-the-times/566424

According to its Form 990s, Mills College had a deficit of $8.9 million for FY 2018, after only $700,000 in positive net revenue for FY 2017. FTE undergraduate enrollment was still falling as of 2018. I doubt that its plan for reinvention is going to succeed. I think the most likely outcome is that it gets acquired by UC Berkeley.

Are you suggesting that Cal would buy the campus, a la Iowa College for the Blind (sold for $1), or do a profitable acquisition of the remnant going operation a la Marlboro (turning over the property and endowment in return for hiring the faculty)?

The Mills campus is tremendously valuable. While the UCB campus is less than miles away, it is not exactly easy to move between them given the traffic and lack of parking and effective public transit. With all the pressures for residential and business facilities in that part of the Bay Area, I bet there are many potential buyers of the property.