Reply to Looming demographic cliff - avoid colleges with less than A financial rating?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree Earlham may be in trouble, which is too bad because it’s a great little school.  But if you’re looking at slightly larger or higher ranked schools in slightly better locations, I don’t think you need to worry. [/quote]

I don't get why people think the national LACs like Earlham want to increase their enrollment. Schools have a specific enrollment target based on their housing, their faculty capacity, their dining capacity, the licenses they pay for software/digital library resources etc.  It's not like schools just want to get more and more students--they have an enrollment target that matches their capacity.   Small private LACs have a lot of flexibility and very few have experienced financial trouble.  Smaller regional publics and parochial schools are the most under threat because a larger body holds decision-making power over them --the state or the church.  The state could decide that a school like Roanoke or Old Dominion would be better as a community college or as a specific training institution.  The Catholic church can decide (and has!) to sell off its low-enrollment colleges rather than invest in them.
 [/quote]

No one is saying Earlham wants to be Arizona State, but it needs to increase its enrollment from current levels just to be able to meet expenses without having to dip into its endowment or shut down departments or services. The difference between 600 and 1,000 full time students represents millions of dollars in working capital each year. That's a big deal for a school that size. [b]The fact is that many of the artsy, creative, woke niche LACs outside the top 50-75 or so (Earlham, Bard, Bennington, Hendrix, etc.) have enrollment numbers 20+ percent below what they were a decade or two ago. [/b]Unless they find a way to turn it around, they're going to be in trouble when the demographic cliff hits in a couple years. Earlham, with its solid endowment, might hang on longer than the others, but its current trend is absolutely not sustainable long term.[/quote]

Where are you finding that fact?[/quote]

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