Sweet Briar College Closes

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Kizmet, Mar 10, 2015.

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  1. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Your school needs a $250 Million endowment to survive. Efforts to save the school have yielded only $3M. So you decide that threatening a dying school with a lawsuit is the way to go. Seems like a desperate and ill-conceived strategy to me.

    A few years ago they closed a local Catholic high school and the parents and alumni went through the same sort of sophomoric temper tantrum. They tried to hold last minute fundraisers. They threatened lawsuits. One group tried to buy the school building and re-open as a school "in the Catholic tradition" that was governed independently. In the end, it went nowhere. It went nowhere because the school had been bleeding money for decades.

    If you want to save your school the time to do it is well before the closure is announced. Last minute fundraising pushes aren't going to make the place sustainable.

    And even if they managed to save the place with the pittance they've raised; how long will it last? It may buy them another year or two and then the same issues will keep coming up.

    I suppose I never fully understood campus culture. They are screaming about the "unilateral action" of its administration. I never really understood why the faculty and student assemblies think they are entitled to as much influence as they demand. I think it does explain why so many new employees act so darn entitled, though.
     
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I had a friend from high school who went there for that exact reason. Reminds me of the scene in the movie Bring It On when the guys get made fun of for being cheerleaders....
     
  3. novadar

    novadar Member

    Funny. I went to Virginia Tech which was imbalanced like 60/40 males to female so there were many weekend runs to Radford University which was almost opposite 40/60. The only problem with that was the influx of VT guys seemed to tip the scale past 50/50 when the guys at Radford upped their game. LOL.
     
  4. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    If you need [insert the gender of your preferred mate] to outnumber you 3-1 to get a date, you might want to reconsider your approach (and possibly, your hygiene practices).

    I'm pretty sure my wife didn't marry me because there were simply no viable alternatives. Just sayin'
     
  5. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I'm guessing that all the signs were there and have been there for some time. How many people actually read all those alumni endowment reports or go to the relevant meetings? Very few. Then they get all up in arms when things "suddenly" fall apart.
     
  6. Afterhours

    Afterhours Member

    Many times a change of name is in order, to attract men. Some examples - Beaver College became Arcadia University. Villa Julie became Stevenson University (Stephenson?) and Our Lady of the Elms - Elms College.

    Sarah Lawrence College did not need to make that change. Very well known and near NYC. Finch College was in NYC, never went co-ed and shut it's doors in the 70s or early 80s.
     
  7. Steve Levicoff

    Steve Levicoff Well-Known Member

    I fail to see why the Sweet Briar situation interests anyone but their students, faculty, and alumni. There have been many colleges that didn't change with the times and went belly up. By the way, I was in the Sweet Briar neighborhood just a couple of weeks ago. Nice place, but dwarfed by the more awesome campus of Liberty U. in nearby Lynchburg.

    One thinks of, among others, the demise and resurrection of Antioch College over the past few years, and the notion that Goddard College (an originator in terms of low-residency programs) has teetered on the brink for many years. I'm also reminded of the death of Beacon College, one of the original regionally accredited distance programs in Washington, DC, discussed heavily in early editions of John Bear's guide.

    Ditto Vermont College, founded in 1837, merged with Norwich University in 1971, bought the distance ed programs of Goddard in 1981, sold by Norwich to The Union Institute circa the mid 1990's, trashed by Union (which skimmed the cream of the school and dumped the rest), but turned around by a new non-profit consortium to become Vermont College of Fine Arts (and is now thriving). (Disclosure: I earned my M.A. at Vermont College when it was part of Norwich.)

    As for HBCU's, those that were managed poorly are gone while others thrive. Check out the history of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, an HBCU that went down the tubes. Compare it with Cheyney University and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, both of which are alive and well. (Wikipedia has profiles on all of them.)

    A note about Beaver College, mentioned earlier: The anecdotal story is that they changed their name when they went for university status because some high school students were unable to look them up on the Internet - beaver, it seemed, was slang for vagina, and school computers tended to block searches of the term. I lived a block from Beaver as a teenager (and, in fact, took a summer course there years before they went co-ed). At one time, Beaver was considered one of the finest liberal arts colleges around. Today, like most schools, they tend to specialize in more commercial fields and are thriving - they changed with the times. But although they have a diverse student population today, their theatre department still has an acute shortage of guys, causing them to produce female-heavy plays over the past few years that have included The Women, Vanities, and even an all-female version of Julius Caesar.

    My take: the schools that have met their demise are best described in a phrase used several times in this thread - bad management. Yep, it's that simple.
     
  8. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  9. warguns

    warguns Member

  10. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  11. major56

    major56 Active Member

  12. Koolcypher

    Koolcypher Member

    When asked what she thought about Sweet Briar closing, Sweet Brown had this to say:

    "Sweet Briar Closing?"

    [​IMG]
     
  13. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  14. Afterhours

    Afterhours Member

    Exactly, Ted Heiks. A liberal arts college has a different mission than a large research university. The goal of a liberal arts college, like the late Sweet Briar, is to educate the undergraduate.

    They do not pretend to be involved with cutting edge research or publication. That is not the point.

    It is the reason why I have directed my college aged students towards liberal arts colleges (LACs) rather than large research universities. I want them to get the best education possible.

    A Prep School has quite another function - which is to prepare the children of the upper class for college. Usually at a small liberal arts school, as opposed to a large research university.

    "High School" was named "High School" because at one time it was the highest education expected of students from middle class and lower backgrounds. The only students who generally went on for more education were those preparing to teach school.

    They went to state or city funded "normal schools" - which later became State Teacher's Colleges.

    Middle class women often did this while awaiting marriage. Teaching by married students was not permitted until the 1930s.

    Sweet Briar's inherent problem was that it was a single sex college, not that it was a "liberal arts college".
     
  15. Afterhours

    Afterhours Member

    Exactly Kismet. My daughter was recently accepted to Mount Holyoke College. She has still not sent her deposit in because she has misgivings about attending MHC because it is a women's college.

    The other colleges that she is thinking of are all private liberal arts colleges or universities - Beloit, Union, Wheaton, Clark, Wittenberg, Wheaton and Middlebury.
     
  16. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Sweet Briar being a single sex college was certainly an issue. But there are single sex colleges that continue to succeed. If being single sex was the only thing that brought Sweet Briar down then I would expect Morehouse or Mount Holyoke or Smith would be facing imminent collapse as well.

    You can get away with admitting only members of one sex just like you can get away with admitting only members of one religion if your alumnae are willing to support it. Schools like Smith tend to have more alumni with much older money.

    Just for fun, here's Wikipedia's list of famous Sweet Briar grads:

    • Colleen Bell, United States Ambassador to Hungary
    • Janet Lee Bouvier, mother of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
    • Leah Busque, entrepreneur, founder of TaskRabbit, and TED speaker[107]
    • Elaine Dundy, actor, journalist, novelist, biographer, and playwright
    • Sally Miller Gearhart, educator and science fiction writer
    • Lendon Gray, two-time Olympic dressage rider
    • Molly Haskell, feminist film critic and author
    • Diana Muldaur, actor and former president of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
    • Anna Chao Pai, American geneticist and professor emerita at Montclair State University.[108]
    • Jean Oliver Sartor, artist
    • Mary Lee Settle, author
    • Polly Sowell, elected to the Texas State Republican Committee in 1960, elected Vice Chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 1972,[109] served on the Texas Commission on the Arts, and appointed a member of Humanities Texas[110]
    • Ann Taylor, National Public Radio newscaster (former student but did not graduate).
    • Teresa Tomlinson, current mayor of Columbus, Georgia
    • Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp, director of the Developmental Disabilities Branch of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

    Not bad.

    I would copy and paste the list from Smith College but it is so huge that it warranted a separate page from the Smith College entry. Here's a link.

    I'm sure that Sweet Briar cranked out graduates who came from privileged families. They clearly have a few graduates who are notable enough to have Wikipedia pages (however much of an indicator of success that is). But the Smith list has high level diplomats, politicians and university presidents. The list also includes five Pulitzer prize winners and a MacArthur fellow.

    So we really shouldn't be surprised when schools like Smith thrive and schools like Sweet Briar falter. Because these successful alumnae contribute (or, don't, depending) to the school's endowment which ensures its continued survival.

    Smith has a $1.75B endowment. They can admit only women because they have more money than (the significantly larger co-ed) Syracuse University. They also have more endowment money than (also co-ed) Tufts, Wake Forest and the Universities of Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa and the entire statewide system of the University of Missouri.

    Sweet Briar, on the other hand, had an endowment of $85M. They could have admitted men for 30 years and the place still likely would have failed.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 5, 2015
  17. Afterhours

    Afterhours Member

    I agree that you can get away with admitting students of one gender - when there is a good deal of alumnae support, leading to a healthy endowment.

    The remaining Seven Sisters that are all women are Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr and Barnard. The last college is so close in it's affiliation and physical proximity to Columbia, that is barely "feels" single sex. It is also in NYC, which is a draw to some students.

    Smith and MHC are in the Five College Consortium - which includes U Mass Amherst, Hampshire, and Amherst College. Women who desire a top notch education in the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, can also choose from over 3000 courses each semester. Buses run on the hour between colleges. Students may use the libraries at any of the colleges and join clubs and participate in extra curricular activities.

    Boston is also about an hour and a half away.

    Wellesley offers cross registration with MIT and is very close to Boston.

    Vassar went co-ed in the 70s. Radcliffe was absorbed into Harvard. I'm not as familiar with Bryn Mawr but it seems to be doing fine.

    Non seven sisters colleges that still draw from a large application pool are the liberal arts but somewhat career focused Simmons College - which is located in the heart of Boston and is also in a consortium with the overwhelmingly male Wentworth Institute of Tech. and a few other college.

    I *think* Wheelock College in Boston is still a women's college - but I could be wrong.

    At one time, New England, NJ, PA and upstate NY were home to many women's colleges. Many were in isolated ares. Those that survived, went co-ed.

    I think some have a reason why they can not become co-educational that has to do with endowment. Or the charter of the school? I'm not sure if I know the terminology. Anyone?
     
  18. warguns

    warguns Member

    Sweet Briar explains

    We Tried Hard, but Sweet Briar

    Here's a letter from the vice-chair of the Sweet Briar board to the WSJ

    The numbers were not in our favor. All research indicated that any effort to reinvent the college would require significant investments of time and money. Unfortunately, with insufficient funds in our unrestricted endowment, these were resources Sweet Briar did not have.

    The board confronted the reality of the situation and the fact that the college would not have enough resources to continue to operate for another full academic year. We also recognized that continuing to fund or seek funds for a college with such core financial problems was simply not fiscally responsible.
     
  19. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  20. graymatter

    graymatter Member

    For what its worth, I recently posted on Facebook (relating to the closing of Clearwater Christian College) and referenced the closing of Sweet Briar (among others). I received a rather hostile response from an alumnus (and former colleague) SHOUTING BACK that SB is "not closed." She linked to this page: https://www.facebook.com/savingsweetbriarinc
     

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