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[quote=Anonymous]I'm not sure I would agree with their criteria and their findings. They themselves admit that most SLACs don't score well in their ranking. But rather than address that fact that many of these schools have survived well over 100 years despite their poor ranking here, they just gloss over this. "For our 2021 ranking, 83 colleges scored a grade of A or better, but nearly half of the private colleges on our list recorded a grade of C or worse. These schools are typically in precarious financial positions, with tight budgets. They tend to have relatively small endowments and depend on tuition revenue to survive each year. They also offer steep discounts in the form of merit aid or scholarships in an effort to fill up their classrooms." There is nothing to indicate that these schools ever would have scored above a C using their criteria. Yet they've been graduating students for decades without shutting their doors. So, a C doesn't actually mean anything significant to a parent worried about whether the school might close?

I recently received a copy of the St. John's College Annual Report. Note that most schools won't even come close to telling you whether they're meeting their budgets and very little info is publicly available. The fact that SJC is very transparent about this is a real plus, IMO. About five years ago they did a big shake up in light of the challenging financial situation hitting many SLACs. They dropped their tuition significantly, from around $50K to $35K and began a major campaign to replace tuition dollars with philanthropic funds. They did belt tightening on the admin side, but did nothing to impact negatively on the very low faculty to student ratio that they're known for. https://thedailyrecord.com/2022/04/26/st-johns-college-says-its-audacious-tuition-cut-is-paying-off/?fbclid=IwAR0fvVTDmeS2o85RAeWmFkdDgIgqQjkU3Ml04z5uheBJgaalgjeItfXKRTE

The Annual Report for 2021 states: 
Achieved goal of ending FY21 with a balanced budget
Enrollment reached a 10-yr high
Tuition remained at a 10-yr low
Applications reached historic highs
The SJC endowment hit a record high

None of this indicates that they should get a C+. USC gets an A even though their expenses exceed revenue?! Shouldn't failure to balance your budget immediately relegate you to at best a B+?

Many of the measures that Forbes considers are things that SLACs will never score high on. A place like SJC that is intentionally very small will never have a huge endowment. There just aren't a ton of alumni to hit up for major money. And they don't spend big on fancy classroom tech, nor do they have a medical school like Columbia that they can use to pad expenditures on students.

I think the financial strength of a college matters. But this list seems to be missing the mark. Why would anyone include admissions yield as a factor in a school's financial health?! Schools know to admit more students if they tend to not be the first choice of applicants. So long as they fill their seats (and therefore meeting their tuition revenue and boarding revenue), why would yield be something that gets factored into financial health? If they're not filling seats, that would be worth including.

As an aside, I hate it when there's a link to the data but it's not actually the pertinent data. SMH. We need to see how each school scored on each of the 9 factors they considered and how much each factor was weighted, but none of that is included in what they shared.[/quote]

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