Middlebury Suffering with larger class sizes and enrollment

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Sounds about right. They need the money, bad.

Ah, the Middlebury troll is back.

Middlebury has zero financial problems, has never had any and likely never will. They are in the top 50 or so schools in the country in terms of endowment (larger than U Miami for example) with more resources per student than schools such as Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, Chicago.

Middlebury has had a small nagging deficit for awhile because Laurie Patton preferred to just ignore it. Baucomb quickly made the right decision on MIIS and I suspect that it will quickly disappear. Even if it didn't the actual budget effect is small kind of like their $1.6B endowment functioning more like a $1.4B endowment. Middlebury also draws conservatively from their endowment, taking a full point less (4.5-5.0%) than peer schools like Colby for example.

Interesting post, but are you sure that Middlebury College has a larger EPS (endowment per student) than Northwestern University ?

My figures are from the NACUBO report on endowments published in 2023; it shows Northwestern with the 31st highest EPS and Middlebury farther down the list at #60. Do you have more recent figures ? TIA

https://insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/learning-innovation/2023/09/08/endowments-full-time-equivalent-student

Many schools want to avoid the endowment tax so, if I recall correctly, it is good from this perspective to be below $500,000 per full-time student endowment.

I do, it depends on the year and the accounting method. The report doesn't jive with Middlebury's own reports or other reports which pegs Northwestern's endowment at about 532K per student. The real take away is that they are all very wealthy schools and the $8M deficit (it grew the one year to about $14 coming out of Covid and with ongoing MIIS issues being over $8M of it) is a non event in Middlebury finances except for the fact that it creates conversations like this inane thread. There is no financial crisis except in the mind of the troll who has an abnormal obsession with Middlebury.

This is 100% true if you ignore the truth and ignore the drain that’s happening to campus life due to change in finances! I get that you don’t like facing uncomfortable truths, but I really don’t see how you can think the deficit doesn’t matter when there are real financial issues that are witnessed and continue to cause issues for student programs and academic departments.

You are just sounding silly now. Should they increase their endowment withdrawal a half point and erase the deficit? (after all they drew down by less than 4.5% in 2024). Or, maybe increase it to 5.5% like Colby and spend even more money? Or, maybe we keep things where they are subtract the money and look at things like a $1.3B endowment school instead of $1.6B. So are you saying that Villanova, Pepperdine, Brandeis, CMC, etc. are unable to effectively support their students and stay financially stable? Could yo comment on the fact that their credit rating is higher than CalTech, Mudd, Baylor, Georgetown, Tufts....the list goes on and on because it is prisitne. YOu can't address any of this because you are living in a little world of your imagination where the school which rejected you is failing. But it isn't failing, you are.

Seeing as all of these schools (Villanova, Pepperdine, Brandeis, CMC) are a wide margin worse than Williams...yeah, seems to be a struggle. Mind you, CMC is rising on the basis that it hardly has to run many majors and basically highly specializes in economics and government. Middlebury has multiples of the majors run by CMC, which means many more faculty and they have 2x the amount of students.

What are you trying to say?

It's okay to say you are ignoring the point.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Sounds about right. They need the money, bad.

Ah, the Middlebury troll is back.

Middlebury has zero financial problems, has never had any and likely never will. They are in the top 50 or so schools in the country in terms of endowment (larger than U Miami for example) with more resources per student than schools such as Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, Chicago.

Middlebury has had a small nagging deficit for awhile because Laurie Patton preferred to just ignore it. Baucomb quickly made the right decision on MIIS and I suspect that it will quickly disappear. Even if it didn't the actual budget effect is small kind of like their $1.6B endowment functioning more like a $1.4B endowment. Middlebury also draws conservatively from their endowment, taking a full point less (4.5-5.0%) than peer schools like Colby for example.

It factually has a deficit that president baucom is working to fix. As an alum, it’s tiring seeing threads delude themselves that there’s anything but a deficit.

+1, I love midd. I donate to Midd as a proud parent, but the institution missed out on a decade and a half of financial glory that peer lacs have reached (Swat, Pomona, Williams, and Amherst all passing the three billion dollar endowment mark). It has also made poor enrollment decisions that have helped erode campus culture. I have a DS at Midd and a DD at Williams, and a nephew at Pomona-the differences in resources between midd and the latter two are night and day. It’s a wonderful school but you have to face reality

You had me until this: "the differences in resources between midd and the latter two are night and day."

What differences are night and day?

Sure, 1) conference and research funding is more abundant. Williams particularly has nearly non-exhaustive research funding and apparently Pomona's student government recently voted to potentially reduce the amount per student, because they've never run out of the fund. 2) Both schools deal less with faculty retention issues than Middlebury and they attract more faculty 3) less staff cuts/issues than Middlebury. 4) International experiences and connections with Oxbridge, which Middlebury lacks. You can check the Humanities program but

Middlebury-CMRS students are Associate Members of Keble College, but are not enrolled at the University of Oxford, and neither Keble College nor the University of Oxford have any responsibility for academic, pastoral, accommodation or disciplinary matters relating to M-CMRS. Students on the program are housed in St Michael’s Hall, in Oxford city center.

and the college doesn't have the fellowship funding for oxbridge study like Williams and Pomona 5) More campus events from more notable scholars including Bill Nye for Parents weekend, Oren Case, Ruha Benjamin, Carl Phillips, Kwame Appiah, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Lonnie G. Bunch III, Sal Khan, and other big speakers all have passed by, while Midd tends to have more academics. 6) Midd is currently having a class size issue, while Williams can maintain a massive tutorials program 7) Both Williams and Pomona have Nobel prize alum. Midd doesn't 8) these exceptional faculty resources lead to better outcomes for graduate school and professional school.

Both Williams and Middlebury have issues with faculty recruitment and retention, due primarily to their rural locations and lack of affordable housing and childcare services. Lack of spousal job opportunities also impacts both colleges. With its suburban location, Pomona deals less with these issues, although a high cost of living is in play.

Williams also isn't immune to budget cuts. Just two years ago, they asked all department heads to identify 15% budget cuts from their FY24 budgets due to a poor endowment performance the prior year.

Middlebury is unmatched in its global presence, with 75 programs in 40 countries. You mention Middlebury's affiliation with Keble College at Oxford, but didn't mention the Lincoln College Visiting Student Program. Students at the Williams-Exeter Program are similarly visiting, non-matriculated Oxford students, although they are fully integrated into Exeter's social and academic circles. And around 25 students participate per year. More than 50 Middlebury students study at Oxford every year. To my knowledge, Pomona doesn't have any affiliation with Oxford. They do have the Program at Jesus College, Cambridge, which students from any of the Claremont Colleges can join.

You mention more campus events from more notable scholars--this is entirely subjective. The names you mention are not necessarily well known outside academic circles. And if you want to consider Bill Nye the Science Guy as a real catch, good for you. Middlebury attracts plenty of accomplished guest speakers.

Williams maintains a massive tutorial program? As I understand it, the college offers 65ish tutorials per year, each with two students. So a total of ~130 students take a tutorial every year. The college says that just over half of Williams students take a tutorial during their time at the college. If "night and day" hinges on your opportunity to take one class while you're in college (and half don't even take advantage of it), so be it.

How does having a Nobel Prize-winning alum impact the current student experience? Bragging rights, okay. But what's the impact on everyday life?

Middlebury does just fine with grad school placement compared to peers.

Listen--Williams and Pomona are wealthier schools--no doubt about that. But saying this added wealth makes a "night and day" difference concerning the overall academic experience is ludicrous and shows bias on your part.

There's a poster on this site who scours news outlets, Middlebury's website, and the college paper for any negative stories and creates threads about them. I'm not certain what their motivation is, but I don't see them doing the same for other SLACs.

Just wanted to add that previous poster said Oxbridge, not Oxford, and that the Claremont colleges is another benefit of itself. Also tutorial is a serious advantage and you failed to mention that most of the students who do tutorial do more than one, so it clearly is a transformative experience. About 1/2 of students study abroad at each of these schools- you wouldn’t call study abroad a useless resource just because not everyone uses it and the same is true of tutorials.

PP mentions both Oxford and Cambridge in their response.

Hey can you actually read? Oxbridge is both. They made the point that Pomona doesn’t have an Oxford study abroad but that was never pp point (nor is it true, but that’s another discussion).

Can you read? Oxbridge is Oxford and Cambridge. PP mentioned programs at both. Please do tell us all about Pomona's program at Oxford (which used to exist but was cut in 2012).

Ah the classic “I’m wrong so let me copy exactly what you said and try to yell louder.” You can take up IFSA oxford like any other student. You can also do CMC’s Oxford program.can you make a point this time instead of copying mine?

You’re dense. We’re talking about Oxbridge programs that are exclusive to the colleges under discussion. Last time I checked, Pomona doesn’t run IFSA.

Unrelated, but Pomona has a fellowship to Cambridge, similar to Williams, which also has fellowships to oxford. I'd highly recommend either for students: https://www.dow.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2016_pomonainfo.pdf
https://fellowships.williams.edu/williams-fellowships/. I'd always recommend a student take these tense forums with a grain of salt, and actually look at opportunities! Now continue fighting or what have you two.

[b]

NP. Fighting over Oxbridge programs means nothing because anyone who is at Oxford knows these American SLAC run programs have nothing to do with the real Oxford and are run simply so kids and their parents can say “and DD studied at Oxford!”. No, they did. Not. They participated in their college’s summer, semester program at Oxford which the college leases space for and pays for. They do not apply and were never accepted by Ixford and are not taught in real tutorials by real dons.

That's great for that ONE kid from Pomona who gets to take advantage of this. Not sure why the earlier poster brought up Oxbridge in the first place. Totally irrelevant to this discussion.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Unsurprising with the recent issues pertaining to a deficit, but this is still sad to see by an elite liberal arts college with the competitive advantage of an intimate educational setting. Potentially this could affect higher-tier LACs like Amherst, Pomona, or Swarthmore?
Source:https://www.middleburycampus.com/article/2025/11/save-small-class-sizes

Wow. this is not what I expected of a LAC.

"The college proudly boasts our 9:1 student-to-faculty ratio and our average class size of 16 on its website and on every tour. But this has not been reflective of our Middlebury experience for years, and the college announced in the spring that it is raising its target enrollment to balance its budget."

"Some have been asked to bring their own chairs, cramming into rooms not meant to accommodate so many people. This is an especially prevalent issue in increasingly popular departments, and not enough has been done to resolve the issue."

Ugh, who would want only nine students in a class? Or even 16? How incredibly dull.

If 9 is dull, so will 1000. Adding students doesn’t make a class more exciting- being exciting and having engaged students makes a class exciting.

There's a whole middle ground between 9-1000 - where did you even get 1000? So bizarre. A perfect class has enough students that you're not staring at the same faces and hearing the same opinions day after day. For me, the right number of students would be anywhere from 30-50.

I just said a number, why are you acting like a petulant child?

Not staring at the same faces? Clearly education is secondary to your studies.

You seem "exciting and engaged".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

Totally agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

Do have something to back up your comment? Given record high application numbers I'm pretty sure that the top SLACs are turning away more people than ever.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Sounds about right. They need the money, bad.

Ah, the Middlebury troll is back.

Middlebury has zero financial problems, has never had any and likely never will. They are in the top 50 or so schools in the country in terms of endowment (larger than U Miami for example) with more resources per student than schools such as Cornell, Brown, Northwestern, Chicago.

Middlebury has had a small nagging deficit for awhile because Laurie Patton preferred to just ignore it. Baucomb quickly made the right decision on MIIS and I suspect that it will quickly disappear. Even if it didn't the actual budget effect is small kind of like their $1.6B endowment functioning more like a $1.4B endowment. Middlebury also draws conservatively from their endowment, taking a full point less (4.5-5.0%) than peer schools like Colby for example.

Interesting post, but are you sure that Middlebury College has a larger EPS (endowment per student) than Northwestern University ?

My figures are from the NACUBO report on endowments published in 2023; it shows Northwestern with the 31st highest EPS and Middlebury farther down the list at #60. Do you have more recent figures ? TIA

https://insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/learning-innovation/2023/09/08/endowments-full-time-equivalent-student

Many schools want to avoid the endowment tax so, if I recall correctly, it is good from this perspective to be below $500,000 per full-time student endowment.

I do, it depends on the year and the accounting method. The report doesn't jive with Middlebury's own reports or other reports which pegs Northwestern's endowment at about 532K per student. The real take away is that they are all very wealthy schools and the $8M deficit (it grew the one year to about $14 coming out of Covid and with ongoing MIIS issues being over $8M of it) is a non event in Middlebury finances except for the fact that it creates conversations like this inane thread. There is no financial crisis except in the mind of the troll who has an abnormal obsession with Middlebury.

This is 100% true if you ignore the truth and ignore the drain that’s happening to campus life due to change in finances! I get that you don’t like facing uncomfortable truths, but I really don’t see how you can think the deficit doesn’t matter when there are real financial issues that are witnessed and continue to cause issues for student programs and academic departments.

You are just sounding silly now. Should they increase their endowment withdrawal a half point and erase the deficit? (after all they drew down by less than 4.5% in 2024). Or, maybe increase it to 5.5% like Colby and spend even more money? Or, maybe we keep things where they are subtract the money and look at things like a $1.3B endowment school instead of $1.6B. So are you saying that Villanova, Pepperdine, Brandeis, CMC, etc. are unable to effectively support their students and stay financially stable? Could yo comment on the fact that their credit rating is higher than CalTech, Mudd, Baylor, Georgetown, Tufts....the list goes on and on because it is prisitne. YOu can't address any of this because you are living in a little world of your imagination where the school which rejected you is failing. But it isn't failing, you are.

Seeing as all of these schools (Villanova, Pepperdine, Brandeis, CMC) are a wide margin worse than Williams...yeah, seems to be a struggle. Mind you, CMC is rising on the basis that it hardly has to run many majors and basically highly specializes in economics and government. Middlebury has multiples of the majors run by CMC, which means many more faculty and they have 2x the amount of students.

What are you trying to say?

It's okay to say you are ignoring the point.

Seriously, what are you trying to say?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

$93,176. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

"The NEA's research concluded that a good number to target is 15, which lies in the middle of their studies based on the 13-17 students per classroom as ideal."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

$93,176. WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS?

The price is indefensible, but the class size is perfect. Smaller is not better.

[Anonymous]

My DCs at different ivies have smaller classes than this, even as stem majors. How odd. Middlebury is not elite, should not be a T20 LAC. Move it down below Colby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

No. Kid has a 9 person engineering non-lab class and it is great. Has had most under 20. Ivy. For less than 93k and with a lot more prestige

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DCs at different ivies have smaller classes than this, even as stem majors. How odd. Middlebury is not elite, should not be a T20 LAC. Move it down below Colby.

Stop it, your kid doesn’t go to an Ivy, they go to Colby. Middlebury is very elite, traditionally in the top 10 for decades. On a size adjusted basis it does better than half of the Ivies for IB and has med school acceptance rates higher than many as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:35 students in a class is still quite small, and if you come from a public high school, that’s close to normal, granted most probably came from private. These kids need to stop whining because there is little difference between 20 and 35 in a college class, even 9 and 20 or 35. If they can’t find a way to speak up or use AI to cheat on readings, that tells you more about student. Welcome to the real world.

Absurd argument defending a college charging $93,176 a year. My SLAC’s seminars were no more than 13.

+1. I can't believe the people on here defending a college that charges that much putting 35 in a class. the SLACs have been hurting since covid. Everyone should know that and sign on to these expensive institutions knowing they are financially strained.

NP. 9 to a class is FAR too small. 20-35 is ideal.

No. Kid has a 9 person engineering non-lab class and it is great. Has had most under 20. Ivy. For less than 93k and with a lot more prestige

your kid may be paying less than 93k because someone else is paying more than 93k to subsidize them. No Ivy has a sticker price less than 93k, and that is the relevant number, the sticker price.