Why more and more colleges are closing down across the U.S.
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Anonymous
SLACs often have a higher percentage of students majoring in STEM than large public universities. |
Anonymous
Arghhh.. fewer, not less. Did you not pay attention in 6th grade English? |
Anonymous
| OP, you posted such a disingenuous title |
Anonymous
That's not true. You don't need a graduate school for undergrads to study STEM and many great LACs have strong STEM studies. |
Anonymous
Cal Tech is a SLAC. |
Anonymous
DP: SLACs represent a TINY portion of the student body and STEM students do very well from them. But their numbers are far too tiny to ever be listed as a "top" school for STEM. But for the students that go, the have excellent outcomes. There are many, many STEM students at universities who end up dropping out of STEM that would have been more likely to persist at it in a SLAC. With the exception of engineering, SLACs really are a strong, viable option for STEM that too many students overlook. Look at the weed-out rates for STEM degrees in many universities, the difficulty of entering into preferred majors etc. There's little to none of that at SLACs. |
Anonymous
| If you look at the list of closing colleges, over 95% are a) small religious colleges, b)art colleges, c) unusually tiny colleges (e.g. <300 students) or specialized single program colleges. |
Anonymous
NP: I thought the cliff was around class of '27. The recession hit 2008 which would have affected birthrate for 2009. At my kid's school, classes of 25 and 26 are significantly bigger than 24. Anecdotal, but I've heard the same about other schools in the area. |
Anonymous
they are weaker in most STEM fields like engineering and CS. Caltech is not a liberal arts college. It has a graduate program. https://www.cms.caltech.edu/academics/grad |
Anonymous
Sorry. I just posted the title of the article on the CNBC website. I certainly was not trying to be disingenuous. |
Anonymous
Engineering, for the most part yes, but exceptions (e.g., Harvey Mudd, Smith, Bucknell). But for CS--if you look at overall ranking of colleges, sure--a small liberal arts college with 100 grads in CS is not going to be highly ranked, but they students--especially if you look at slightly longer time horizons, do very well in their careers and the major has a far higher retention rate (and fewer bars to admission in the major) in SLACs than universities. |
Anonymous
sure, but we're talking about colleges that are closing because their colleges are losing people. |
Anonymous
I thought you were talking about LACs. Anyway, the colleges that are closing are religious colleges and art schools. So not really any statement on LACs writ large either. |
Anonymous
I agree with everything you stated. I'm certainly not worried about it. These things tend to sort out over time. I am curious how this plays out for small colleges. I'm certain that no one on DCUMs has ever thought about sending their kids to small schools like those that are in financial trouble or have closed. However, I do worry for the kids that had only these schools as an opportunity for a college degree. I guess my question is if small colleges will or can adjust to the so called "admission cliff" in the next couple of years. As a PP stated, the biggest decline in HS graduating seniors starts in 2025 and the regions that are seeing the largest declines are the NE, Mid Atlantic and MW. That can't be good news for small colleges up the East Coast. |
Anonymous
You are so funny I could have laughed. |