WaPo feature on bad economic outlook for colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

It dropped in the rankings, I think,and the lawsuit verdict wasn’t a good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The issue is bloated tuition arising from bloated staff that don't teach. When that becomes unsustainable, which may be now, the remedy will be obvious.

Nice soapbox lecture, but that is by no means “the issue”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

It dropped in the rankings, I think,and the lawsuit verdict wasn’t a good luck.

I think Oberlin’s problems started long before that lawsuit. And the cultural bent of the college isn’t the issue

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Colleges and universities can make significant reductions in expenses by modifying what and how they deliver education. They should cut so many of the A to Z majors and minors that don't offer gainful employment to their graduates. Many general Ed requirements of the first year or first two years can be delivered online/webinar style. They can bring the students to campus for short stints for intensive labs, group projects, tests, presentations, etc. (like they do for executive MBA programs, etc.) This will shrink the physical size, faculty and support staff, maintenance expense, etc. In short, they can operate on a much smaller annual budgets.

In fact, some colleges/universities can specialize in lab based majors and offer immersion type intensive short duration labs, say for two weeks. Other colleges could rent these facilities and faculty for their students. Throughout the academic year, such lab based colleges will be functioning offering their facilities for a set of colleges on reservation basis.

This model of education delivery will do away with college sports, athlete recruiting, large campus sizes, high fixed costs. It will significantly reduce per credit hour tuition, eliminate fee for so many non-academic expenses, total cost of obtaining an undergraduate degree. Also, this model will allow students to have flexible schedules with differing workloads to allow part-time jobs, study from home, etc. The colleges, instead of being physically pinned to a geographic location, will have wide reach to attract students who live in far away places.

This model will clearly be a disruptor of traditional higher education delivery model and will wipe out at least 2000 to 3000 of the existing colleges/universities. Make higher education more affordable and more accessible (even to people living in rural and sparsely populated areas), enhance education level of the population. It could increase the overall quality of education delivery. There is absolutely no reason why in this modern age colleges should still follow the education delivery model of centuries ago.

Bump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

It dropped in the rankings, I think, and the lawsuit verdict wasn’t a good luck.

I think Oberlin’s problems started long before that lawsuit. And the cultural bent of the college isn’t the issue

Certainly the issues presented in the article predated the law suit. The interesting comparison would be Kenyon, they seem well positioned to scoop up the wealthy applicants. They own their town and have created a walled garden feel. The student body seems strikingly wealthy, including international. They also seemed to use not being need-blind as a selling point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges and universities can make significant reductions in expenses by modifying what and how they deliver education. They should cut so many of the A to Z majors and minors that don't offer gainful employment to their graduates. Many general Ed requirements of the first year or first two years can be delivered online/webinar style. They can bring the students to campus for short stints for intensive labs, group projects, tests, presentations, etc. (like they do for executive MBA programs, etc.) This will shrink the physical size, faculty and support staff, maintenance expense, etc. In short, they can operate on a much smaller annual budgets.

In fact, some colleges/universities can specialize in lab based majors and offer immersion type intensive short duration labs, say for two weeks. Other colleges could rent these facilities and faculty for their students. Throughout the academic year, such lab based colleges will be functioning offering their facilities for a set of colleges on reservation basis.

This model of education delivery will do away with college sports, athlete recruiting, large campus sizes, high fixed costs. It will significantly reduce per credit hour tuition, eliminate fee for so many non-academic expenses, total cost of obtaining an undergraduate degree. Also, this model will allow students to have flexible schedules with differing workloads to allow part-time jobs, study from home, etc. The colleges, instead of being physically pinned to a geographic location, will have wide reach to attract students who live in far away places.

This model will clearly be a disruptor of traditional higher education delivery model and will wipe out at least 2000 to 3000 of the existing colleges/universities. Make higher education more affordable and more accessible (even to people living in rural and sparsely populated areas), enhance education level of the population. It could increase the overall quality of education delivery. There is absolutely no reason why in this modern age colleges should still follow the education delivery model of centuries ago.

Bump.

Okay, you send your kid to such a school, first.

[Anonymous]

I’m really concerned for HBCUs. I doubt most will make it another 20 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

And yet Bucknell is not at all that kind of place. This is a yield miscalculation, nothing more.

No it’s d-bag school in the middle of nowhere that has hard time luring bros from the state school experience. Different vibe, same issue.

Wow, your kid was rejected from Bucknell? Sorry about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hadn't known Earlham was struggling and I quickly googled and in one of the campus articles on the departing president (after just one year) I found this quote:

"Earlham was facing pressure to enroll more students who could pay close to the full sticker price, while Price was known to feel strongly about the importance of continuing to further diversify the student body by attracting more first-generation and minority students, the faculty member said."

That pretty much sums it up. The issue isn't changes in demographic sizes (number of graduating seniors) but that the model of private higher education has become so increasingly reliant on finding enough full paying students to subsidize the other half of the student body at hefty discounts and the byproduct is that tuition shot up for full freight in order to pay for allthe bells and whistles, including financial aid for lower income students, which is now squeezing out the upper middle classes, and left the school trapped into a dangerous place. There's only so many full freight families and only so many of those would be interested in a place like Earlham.

Earlham isn't *really* struggling. They had a somewhat alarmist advisory board and some unsustainable financial practices. They need to make adjustments but they should be fine (Note: I have no connection to Earlham, just work in higher ed data field).

I was reading a few of the Earlham articles. Apparently they were trying to increase the size of the student body to 1400 from 1,000 but failed to expand it at all. I would think the school isn't struggling in the sense it's not on the threshold of closing but it seemed that the board were aware of problems down the road and trying to prepare the college for it, such as expanding the student body to be hopefully more financially sound. But that they couldn't do it is also telling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

And yet Bucknell is not at all that kind of place. This is a yield miscalculation, nothing more.

No it’s d-bag school in the middle of nowhere that has hard time luring bros from the state school experience. Different vibe, same issue.

Wow, your kid was rejected from Bucknell? Sorry about that.

No one was rejected form Bucknell. That's the point. They couldn't even fill their freshman class.

[Anonymous]

The other issue is that a lot of these colleges have wholly unrealistic pension plans. This is a massive problem at the public universities as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

And yet Bucknell is not at all that kind of place. This is a yield miscalculation, nothing more.

No it’s d-bag school in the middle of nowhere that has hard time luring bros from the state school experience. Different vibe, same issue.

Wow, your kid was rejected from Bucknell? Sorry about that.

No one was rejected form Bucknell. That's the point. They couldn't even fill their freshman class.

70% of applicants were rejected from Bucknell. They just miscalculated yield. You sound unbelievably dumb.

[Anonymous]

^^You’re arguing with a moron.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article also mentioned Bucknell didn't meet their enrollment target.

That surprised me. It seems like a competitive school at least to me. Oberlin is surprising as well. It is a known school. I hate saying this, but I wonder if the social justice outrage of several years ago turned people off to certain schools. I think people are willing to bite the bullet for schools like Harvard and Yale, but not for Oberlin?

And yet Bucknell is not at all that kind of place. This is a yield miscalculation, nothing more.

No it’s d-bag school in the middle of nowhere that has hard time luring bros from the state school experience. Different vibe, same issue.

Wow, your kid was rejected from Bucknell? Sorry about that.

No one was rejected form Bucknell. That's the point. They couldn't even fill their freshman class.

70% of applicants were rejected from Bucknell. They just miscalculated yield. You sound unbelievably dumb.

And what's the solution going to be next year? Lower standards. It wasn't a fluke there were problems all round: https://www.inquirer.com/education/college-enrollment-student-bucknell-muhlenberg-ursinus-dickinson-20190930.html

At Bucknell University last spring, prospective admissions were tracking similar to last year through most of April.

Then, a few days shy of the May 1 deadline for students to accept an admission offer and pay a deposit, "the spigot just turned off,” said Bucknell president John C. Bravman.

The university found itself short of its freshman enrollment target and turned to the prospective students it had put on a waiting list. Instead of admitting 35 students off that list, as it usually does, the selective liberal arts university in central Pennsylvania took about 100. And it still started the fall a dozen students below its target...

Bucknell suspects it lost students to cheaper public universities. Last year, four of the top six schools where Bucknell overlapped in enrollment offers were public.

[Anonymous]

The problem is that many universities are now run like corporations. Thus have marketing departments, high end financial portfolio managers, managers to run their country club like amenities for students and faculty, and just layers upon layers of useless managers and departments where staff make 6 figure salaries. You could prob get rid of half of the useless jobs on campus and the university would still function fine. The problem is that you have so much stupid emphasis on University rankings by dumb publications like USNWR that pump the whole system up, and it factors things like endowment sizes and amenities for students into the ranks of perceived desirability to go to such a school by prospective students. Everyone has their hand in the cookie jar in order to pay themselves large salaries while running educations like a Fortune 500 company. The whole system will implode when jobs and salaries no longer keep up to pay for all of the debt now required to support this massively over bloated system. Same thing happens often in healthcare.