Colleges in Dire Financial Straits

[polly_mer]

Yes, almost no institutions are LACs. That's one of the magical thinking aspects of interacting with faculty who just have no clue about the higher ed business outside of the classroom.

This year and next will be a very rude wake-up call for the faculty at many institutions because, technically, Super Dinky is less selective at admitting 50-60% of applicants, depending on source and year.  Many of the small, non-elite colleges are going to have problems worse than they already had. 

Even a medium R2 likely will struggle if their mission isn't already aligned with the interests in the region and keeps asserting a liberal arts mindset in the typical departments who benefit from that assertion instead of realigning gen eds and cutting contingent faculty in droves to free up resources for faculty in majors.

[kaysixteen]

All this disputation wrt which schools qualify as liberal arts colleges remains nice, but I still would be very interested to know if anyone wants to offer a definition of 'liberal arts' that allows one to figure out which disciplines we ought to put therein, and if anyone has any good citations to presumably authoritative back-up citations for their definition?

A related question would be, how many non-liberal arts disciplines could be taught at a lac, and whether one ought to be able to major in one of these, and have the school still be a lac?

Without a reasonable definition and authoritative back-up, the question is not necessarily worth much, allowing many more schools than one might think of, to reasonably get away with labeling themselves lacs.

[Wahoo Redux]

lib·er·al arts
/ˈlib(ə)rəl ärts/
noun
NORTH AMERICAN
academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences as distinct from professional and technical subjects.
HISTORICAL
the medieval trivium and quadrivium.

The big thing here is that some posters really resent the "distinct from professional and technical" stuff and see no point in it.  I suspect something happened to someone's academic career having to do with lib arts professors and administration, but I will never know. 

[polly_mer]

lib·er·al arts
/ˈlib(ə)rəl ärts/
noun
NORTH AMERICAN
academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences as distinct from professional and technical subjects.
HISTORICAL
the medieval trivium and quadrivium.

The big thing here is that some posters really resent the "distinct from professional and technical" stuff and see no point in it.  I suspect something happened to someone's academic career having to do with lib arts professors and administration, but I will never know.

(1) That's not the useful definition for the discussion of what constitutes a liberal arts college.

(2) Almost nobody gets a liberal arts degree any more unless psychology counts.

(3) I laugh pretty hard about the notion that somehow my career was ruined by liberal arts professors.  I left Super Dinky before it went under and landed a fabulous science career using my education.  I left academia entirely because the good jobs are few and far between for the kind of career I wanted that includes a very small town at an institution that will likely be open for the rest of my productive life.  There are big city options, but few small town options.

When I was more optimistic, I hoped faculty would be able to use their vaunted critical thinking skills to also leave before the crash that was coming and has been accelerated by Covid.

I keep watching higher ed now as one might watch a soap opera to see what happens to the various characters.


Posting here is much like yelling at the TV for the characters in the horror movie who keep doing stupid things hoping to evade the killer/monsters instead of leaving.

[polly_mer]

UConn facing huge deficits: https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/28/uconn-could-face-largest-budget-shortfall-in-schools-history/

[apl68]

UConn facing huge deficits: https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/28/uconn-could-face-largest-budget-shortfall-in-schools-history/

Interesting to note that they say that "net tuition loss is next to zero," but they're running a 5% deficit due to losses in housing and dining revenue.  Which speaks to the question of several days ago concerning why the loss of housing and dining revenue matters.

[ciao_yall]

UConn facing huge deficits: https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/28/uconn-could-face-largest-budget-shortfall-in-schools-history/

Interesting to note that they say that "net tuition loss is next to zero," but they're running a 5% deficit due to losses in housing and dining revenue.  Which speaks to the question of several days ago concerning why the loss of housing and dining revenue matters.

Because there still may be fixed costs in maintaining the dorms and kitchens even if they aren't being used.

[spork]

UConn facing huge deficits: https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/28/uconn-could-face-largest-budget-shortfall-in-schools-history/

Interesting to note that they say that "net tuition loss is next to zero," but they're running a 5% deficit due to losses in housing and dining revenue.  Which speaks to the question of several days ago concerning why the loss of housing and dining revenue matters.

Because there still may be fixed costs in maintaining the dorms and kitchens even if they aren't being used.

No. Because net revenue depends on the profit earned from housing and dining. The existing university budget is not solvent without housing and dining as a profit center.

[ciao_yall]

UConn facing huge deficits: https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/28/uconn-could-face-largest-budget-shortfall-in-schools-history/

Interesting to note that they say that "net tuition loss is next to zero," but they're running a 5% deficit due to losses in housing and dining revenue.  Which speaks to the question of several days ago concerning why the loss of housing and dining revenue matters.

Because there still may be fixed costs in maintaining the dorms and kitchens even if they aren't being used.

No. Because net revenue depends on the profit earned from housing and dining. The existing university budget is not solvent without housing and dining as a profit center.

I think the point was that, if housing and dining loses 5% profit overall, then loss of that revenue of 100 should theoretically eliminate the costs of 105, leading to a breakeven situation or even a net improvement in profit since that 5% loss goes away.

But it's not that simple.

[polly_mer]

It's almost as if knowing how a university runs as a human organization would be relevant to making decisions regarding employment and stability.  Huh.  Which gen ed course teaches such a thing again?

[spork]

William Patterson University. Not truly dire because it's public and it has a mid-sized enrollment, but probably a $10 million shortfall, with a big chunk of that coming from a dorm occupancy rate of only ~ 50%. More problematic is a 50% completion rate and an acceptance rate of > 90% (not in article, from my own research).

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/education/2020/09/09/wpu-wayne-budget-gap-enrollment-drop-vacancy-dorms/5744440002/.

[onehappyunicorn]

William Patterson University. Not truly dire because it's public and it has a mid-sized enrollment, but probably a $10 million shortfall, with a big chunk of that coming from a dorm occupancy rate of only ~ 50%. More problematic is a 50% completion rate and an acceptance rate of > 90% (not in article, from my own research).

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/education/2020/09/09/wpu-wayne-budget-gap-enrollment-drop-vacancy-dorms/5744440002/.

I once got stuck in the art building elevator at WPU for 20 minutes.
I ended up dropping out of that program and completing my degree at another institution several years later. As a first-generation college student I didn't understand how to advocate for myself and I was enrolled into several classes that weren't necessary for my degree by the advising center. I hope things are better now but my experience there was not very positive.

[spork]

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in merger discussions with Wentworth Institute of Technology:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/20/metro/benjamin-frankin-institute-technology-wentworth-are-talking-merger-secret/.

[mamselle]

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in merger discussions with Wentworth Institute of Technology:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/20/metro/benjamin-frankin-institute-technology-wentworth-are-talking-merger-secret/.

Interesting. A friend works at BFIT. Hope they'll be OK.

M.

[mamselle]

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in merger discussions with Wentworth Institute of Technology:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/20/metro/benjamin-frankin-institute-technology-wentworth-are-talking-merger-secret/.

Interesting. A friend works at BFIT. Hope they'll be OK.

M.

Just heard back.

No-one knew anything, and friend is well-enough placed to be worried that they only heard vague rumors last week.

I'm worried for them.

M.