Sweet Briar College Closes

Oddly enough, it seems that a lot of those students don't want to go back.

Chicago Tribune

 

After all the crazy stuff that has happened there lately, who can blame them? If I was a SBC student, I'd probably want to transfer to something with a bit more stability.

 

Well, there's a few things that would come to my mind if I was a (x) student considering re-enrolling. The first is, will this school ever get off life-support? Do I want to take the risk? Will my program even be offered9? Most of the instructors are gone, who will teach my courses? Some fast hire adjuncts? If the school re-opens and stays open long enough and I manage to graduate, will my degree be worth anything? If the school fails sometime after my graduation what will that mean for me? Lots of questions, no nice, neat, clear answers.

 

Sweet Briar gets a record number of applications

Sweet Briar College gets record number of applicants | USA TODAY College

 

Alternate headline: Record number of students make poor college decision based on an emotional knee-jerk rather than what is best for their futures

 

Of course, that could apply to any number of colleges.

 

Naturally.

But let's look at this breakdown for a second:

Tuition (14-15 is still posted on their website, excellent sign): $34,460
Room and Board: $12,160

So, you're looking at $46,620 per year to attend a college that is asking permission to significantly tap into its endowment (also read as: begin eating itself).

Your best case scenario is walking away having spent $200k and you get a degree from this school. But hey, I'm sure you'll get an awesome return on a B.F.A. in Dance Studies or a B.A. in Philosophy, Classics, Medieval Studies, Musical Theatre, Latin American Studies, French, Gender Studies, History of Art, Anthropology or Archaelogy (the majority of their programs).

Alternatively, you could go for the mega-bucks with their pre-law (which can be any course of study), pre-med (nothing like showing up at med school with $200k already spent on higher ed) or pre-vet programs (average starting salary is around $60k).

I will say that their engineering program, at the very least, is ABET accredited even if it is unranked.

I don't mean to imply that these degrees are worthless. They are, however, wildly overpriced for the sort of economic return you can expect. If you want to study medieval studies, that's great, but why you would spend $200k before even applying to a graduate program is beyond me. Especially considering you could hop on over to the University of Virginia and get the same degree for only $38k per year (still expensive, in-state tuition).

My criticism of Sweet Briar is largely the same as my criticism for the University of Phoenix. The tuition is too damn high. Spending Ivy League money on a non-Ivy League education is just plain financially irresponsible. The key difference, of course, is that the average student at UofP is a working professional who is partially paying for that education with tuition assistance and possibly the GI Bill while the average Sweet Briar student comes from an upper middle class family that values "the college experience" more than the utility of that education.

It just reinforces my belief that schools like Sweet Briar are nothing more than finishing schools and the sooner they fall by the wayside, the better off higher ed will be.

 

they call this a liberal arts education

=X

 

You can have that same liberal arts education at a school like Hunter College (CUNY) for around $7k per year.

I'm suggesting that we divorce the notion of a liberal arts education (which is a statement about the education, not how leafy the quads are) from the notion that expensive is "better."

 

I have a strong tendency to agree with you in this matter but I also understand that economic return is not the only return on investment that people value. Many people take other factors into consideration and their own value systems are sufficiently strong that they are willing to pay that price. This is actually relatively common and the evidence is simply the continued existence of Sweet Briar and lots of other schools like it sprinkled all over the country. If some relatively wealthy parent wants to send their precious snowflake off to Sweet Briar then I'm not going to argue with them, even if I disagree.

 

expensive is always better for the DoE

 

I don't take issue with the wealthy who can afford to spend gobs more money than the education itself is worth.

Much like my disagreements with folks in the wedding photography thread, my issue isn't with the product itself. It isn't with the fact that people are willing to pay for it. My issue is when these notions embed themselves as conventional wisdom to the point where a person who cannot afford these things feels that they either pursue that thing anyway or accept that they took the half-assed approach.

If you can afford wedding photos and want to spend your money on them, awesome. Go for it. I have a friend who spends an appreciable portion of his discretionary income on vintage vinyl. That's his money to spend as he sees fit. But if you can't afford wedding photos I object to the notion that your wedding is "less than" without an expensive photographer.

Same thing here with Sweet Briar. If you can afford it, cool. If you can't, there are plenty of places to get an education (be it pre-professional, liberal arts or technical) at a fraction of the cost. If mom and dad are footing the bill and just want young Poppy to have a fun college experience that's fine. But the first generation student, who is going to rely on student loans to complete her education, may also end up getting duped into thinking that Sweet Briar can offer her something that Hunter College cannot and that the lifetime of debt is worth it.

And that's a false promise that has been offered by the Sweet Briars of America for generations. Small and large and almost always private some schools have this reputation that their education is so top shelf that it's worth the added cost. And it might be, as long as you can afford it. And guess what? Most people simply can't.

 

I agree with this and would add a couple of things. I would argue that the education might actually be better at Hunter owing largely to the diversity of the student population. I think that when parents send their kids to places like Sweet Briar they are looking for the overall experience. They are paying for an extended adolescence in a protective environment for their precious snowflakes and, as you said, that's fine but I think that then you wind up being surrounded by other snowflakes who are, in many ways, like yourself and so you lose that student diversity that can be instrumental in the education process. It's a reflection of value systems and while I can get behind pluralism I also recognize that each system has it's pros and cons. I am glad that I went to a urban school with a bunch of people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

 

Update: not great

Video: Sweet Briar Picks Up the Pieces - The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

Not great at all.

Aside from the fact that Sweet Briar, even before it bottomed out, had roughly half of the number they now state they "need" to survive, elsewhere in the article he states that they only have around 55% of the faculty they had pre-"closing."

So, you're talking about a massive ramp up (as they only have around 250 students right now).

President Stone seems somewhat realistic, however, that even at 800 they aren't going to survive and they need to hit at least 1,800.

1,800 students is still a small school. But it's going to be a pretty difficult proposition, especially if they continue to go the all-women route. Frankly, the hedge fund daddies who want to send their precious little snowflakes to an all-women's college have their pick of more prestigious names at schools which are far more likely to be there in 10 years.

I also imagine it will be a bit of a challenge to attract quality faculty. To be fair, I have no doubt that they will attract faculty to fill in all of those gaps (assuming they actually recruit students to justify the expense). For a freshly minted PhD, Sweet Briar is certainly not a bad name to put on your resume and a full-time job there would surely beat adjunct hell elsewhere. A job that only lasts for a year or two is better than being unemployed.

The biggest obstacle Sweet Briar likely has is nostalgia. It's supporters were willing to raise money ONLY when the school was facing imminent closure. Had they been raising those millions regularly for the past few decades, Sweet Briar's situation might not be so dire. So SBC's supporters must not be thinking of the school very often. They are also incredibly resistant to the idea that it might admit men. People don't want SBC to survive at any cost. They want SBC to survive ONLY if it means that the school not undergo any substantial change and, it seems, only if that survival does not require a sustained effort on the part of its friends and alumnae.

Personally, I feel like if people put forth a fraction of the effort into an issue that matters (like hunger) much more progress might be possible. But people are motivated much more by the school they once attended rather than the well-being of strangers. Sad but true.

 

I agree with you on this. I feel as though this school could easily fix enrollment problems by just allowing males to attend. I'm sure young ladies would much rather attend school with young men. But this school will continue down its own path of distruction. Of course this is the same school that did not desegregate until they were forced to.

 

lessons learned

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/05/sweet-briar-president-pixie-dust-and-miracles-wont-save-small-colleges/

 

update

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Can-Sweet-Briar-Survive-/243163