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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Declining state funding.

In such a government environment, the only public universities that can survive and maintain a high reputation are large research universities.

Federal research funding brings them plenty of money (the schools take a cut out of research grants won by professors) and the large student population keeps the state government happy (they are educating more people on a lower budget due to fixed costs).

[/quote]

This is also something that's playing out in Virginia with UVA and W&M.

Both are private-feeling colleges compared to the large research universities like Berkeley, Michigan, etc. Both focus heavily on the liberal arts over STEM for undergraduates.

UVA has been investing towards becoming a large research-focused university and improving particularly in STEM. It's something the former president Teresa Sullivan (who was previously provost at Michigan) tried to gear UVA towards. There was controversy regarding it but it's something that UVA with its resources and backing of the state as the flagship university could achieve.

W&M is in a much more precarious position. It's a smaller school with basically no research, with a larger share of its budget coming from the state than UVA (15% vs. 6%). It's very weak in STEM other than being a college for pre-meds, but that's a role plenty of public colleges in the state can fulfill. Its endowment is far smaller.

It really doesn't make sense for the state of Virginia to spend more funding the school than others like Christopher Newport or Mary Washington from a pure numbers perspective. Why spend more money attracting top professors to educate the same number of students? It's not like the professors are brining research grants, it's entirely focused on teaching undergraduates. And it shows; the salaries of professors at W&M compared to schools ranked near it is dismal.

I see it going the route of many smaller, liberal arts-focused public colleges across the US, like Miami. Well-liked in the state and closely surrounding regions, but failing to attract the type of top students that want national name recognition because they don't plan to be stuck in the same small region of the country for their whole career. This is also happening to a lot of private SLACs outside of the top of the crop.

And of course, decreased state funding leading to greater deterioration of school resources and faculties. But that is a given.[/quote]

I think this is spot on. I was reading an article about the struggles of private LACs, and one mentioned Miami of Ohio as a public that was facing the same issues. I thought of William & Mary (to a lesser degree) as well. [/quote]

[b]W&M is tasked with providing an intimate private-school education akin to Rice, Tufts and Notre Dame in instruction quality and size at a public school price. The numbers simply don't add up.[/b] Something has to give, and it's either instruction quality or size (which will also affect instruction quality) or by the way things are trending, both. [/quote]

Not sure I buy your premise.  I just looked at undergraduate teaching rankings on USNWR and instruction ratings from surveys on Niche and Princeton Review.  On USNWR undergraduate teaching, William and Mary is 9, three spots behind Rice at 6, but ahead of Notre Dame and Tufts.  In Niche and Princeton Review (are professors accessible, prepared, understandable, passionate), William and Mary is ahead of all three of those schools.  I don't think a school has to spend a fortune to be good at providing good instruction, they just need to put an emphasis on it, and William and Mary appears to do it.  [/quote]
Yes, and it was perenially 3rd behind Princeton and Dartmouth several years ago.

The amount is W&M is in a precarious position that could lead to its decline, not that it's already a mediocre school (despite having declined in various rankings in recent times).[/quote]

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