Anonymous wrote:Mills, Hampshire & Sweet Briar seemed somewhat well-known to me but the former closed & the latter two are barely hanging on. St. Joes in PA acquired two colleges in the last year so they’re doing better than I would have expected.

Women's colleges are a specialty school from a somewhat bygone era (Mills/Sweet Briar) not really typical and not highly ranked as the others. Mills merged with Northeastern which is not a bad approach. Hampshire was an odd tiny school, founded not that long ago in an area dense with colleges. It was sort of more an educational experiment than a full-blown traditional institution. These examples support the claim that it's very low-ranked schools or specialty schools that are tending to close. Similarly the Vermont schools that were unusually tiny (Marlboro, Green Mountain).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that Bucknell will end up buying Susquehanna in Selinsgrove (13 miles away from Bucknell) eventually. Susquehanna isn’t doing well financially.

Penn State wouldn’t be interested? New Jersey just bought Bloomfield College and is merging it with Montclair State.

Most of the PSU satellite campuses are underenrolled.

I think Lehigh and Bucknell may have slightly more name recognition, but without looking up rankings, all of these schools are pretty much the same to me.

- HYP grad

Just one person’s opinion but Dickinson is the least impressive name in the bunch. I always thought of it as a sort of goofy school. The others are solid.

Confused by some of the ignorance. Hasn't Lehigh made several NCAA bball tournament appearances?

Anonymous wrote:I think that Bucknell will end up buying Susquehanna in Selinsgrove (13 miles away from Bucknell) eventually. Susquehanna isn’t doing well financially.

Penn State wouldn’t be interested? New Jersey just bought Bloomfield College and is merging it with Montclair State.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another NC native. I hadn’t heard of any of them until I started the college search with my first kid. Only exception is a former babysitter who was an athletic recruit to Lehigh. And my first thought was: wow, sad such a promising kid is going somewhere so random.

I've often wondered if it's painful to be so ignorant. Is it?

+1 There are so many people in this forum that seem proud of never having heard of some really great colleges. So weird.

A college that is need aware and charges $75k/year isn’t “great”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another NC native. I hadn’t heard of any of them until I started the college search with my first kid. Only exception is a former babysitter who was an athletic recruit to Lehigh. And my first thought was: wow, sad such a promising kid is going somewhere so random.

I've often wondered if it's painful to be so ignorant. Is it?

+1 There are so many people in this forum that seem proud of never having heard of some really great colleges. So weird.

I think that Bucknell will end up buying Susquehanna in Selinsgrove (13 miles away from Bucknell) eventually. Susquehanna isn’t doing well financially.

Mills, Hampshire & Sweet Briar seemed somewhat well-known to me but the former closed & the latter two are barely hanging on. St. Joes in PA acquired two colleges in the last year so they’re doing better than I would have expected.

Not in the area. I have never heard of any of them until this post.

Anonymous wrote:What is the probability these schools will still be in business in 30 years?

Very high. When you hear of schools in danger of being closed, it is primarily regional private institutions--often religious-- and specialty private schools like art, culinary and vocational schools. Not schools that are even ranked by USNWR or the 388 included in the Princeton Review.


There may be some tiny national LACs that end up merging with another institution and some small public state regional institutions that reduce their offerings to specific specialties, but we are not talking about schools of the caliber of Lehigh, Lafayette, Dickinson or Bucknell or even a tier below.

Anonymous wrote:Another NC native. I hadn’t heard of any of them until I started the college search with my first kid. Only exception is a former babysitter who was an athletic recruit to Lehigh. And my first thought was: wow, sad such a promising kid is going somewhere so random.

I've often wondered if it's painful to be so ignorant. Is it?