It’s definitely not a secret that college athletics are an important factor in keeping the lights on at many D3 schools (probably some D2 as well).
There are many students who want to continue playing sports and from the college perspective, the coaches are simply additional AOs out there recruiting students.
With that said, athletes are often among the last students to leave at schools that are struggling, so their proportions can look high (because they are at that point.) No data, just my experience.
I do think that one tactic for attracting and retaining more students (especially male students) is by providing opportunities to continue competitive sports.
There was a podcast on this that I linked in another thread on exactly this by the president of a small liberal arts school in Michigan. The school president’s point was that schools had to have good academics, of course, but also had to offer something else. It could be sports or it could be participating in marching band. This could suit a kid who was good, but not good enough for the University of Michigan, e.g.
Teachout is going to be done by Manhattanville University, which isn’t in quite as precarious a financial situation, but it isn’t great. I wonder what Manhattanville gets out of this (because it has to be something).
Manhattanville has also expressed interest in developing a legacy agreement that would integrate the Wells College name and history into the Manhattanville community.
Perhaps that it’s listed with a few sentences about it as linking to Wells, while the other teach-out partners were just named in a list of other possibilities? I.e., maybe it was for better product placement for Manhattanville in all future communications/support being provided to students?
I was afraid that this one would happen. Very nice little school in upstate NY but teetering on the edge at around 350 students since Covid and didn’t seem to be getting their feet under them.
Small, tuition dependent and with few resources to fall back on made this one feel inevitable especially after Cazenovia College closed. They draw most of their students from NYS so there is demographic pressure and I am sure that the Excelsior Scholarship created yet another headwind for them though it is a great benefit for NYS residents.
I’m sure it has been discussed before, but another stressor on the horizon for NYS is that the high school graduate population is expected to decline starting in 2026 and last until at least 2037.
That is what I meant by “demographic pressure”. The population is already declining and in the rural regions it is very severe. Schools like Wells and Cazenovia which were dependent on NYS residents the future is pretty stark. It’s not just the privates which are suffering either. Multiple regional SUNYs like Potsdam and Fredonia have seen severe contractions.
Not just in New York. Only a very few places are expected to have more high school graduates in 2029 than 2013 (California, Utah, maybe Minnesota and New Mexico, and Texas, with the latter’s growth driven nearly entirely by Houston and San Antonio), and most places the drop has already set in.
New York, though, is expected to be hit particularly hard.
Sorry, I totally missed your reference to demographics. Even in my state, which is expected to see only a mild drop in HS graduates, we’re already seeing college enrollment declines because fewer HS grads are choosing to go to college.
It will be and there will be winners and losers in this process. There are more small schools like Wells across NYS. NY is being proactive with things like Excelsior to try and keep students in the SUNY system and by being pretty aggressive in making the Universities which are very good financially attractive to OOS students. Time will tell how it works out. One big challenge in right sizing the SUNY system will be the fact that many of the more rural schools are vital to the economies of their regions.
I actually worked at a college that was very stripped down and European … until the demands of the prospective students no longer matched the model. During my time there, it became increasingly difficult to attract students without offering more, more, more. We could only do so much, and the students wanted to pay less. There is a tipping point at which a school can no longer operate.
Northeastern and Boston University used to be no frills colleges. When applications and enrolment fell, they had to upscale. It worked for both schools in a big way.
Sad to hear about this. The article from SwimSwam notes that 153 of 346 students are varsity athletes. Follows the model of schools using athletic recruiting to bring in tuition. The Cayuga campus will be enticing to someone.
