Don’t go buying Disney stock based on odd blogs.
LU right down US 29 from SBC is thriving while being neither prestige or selective school. Just to the west a new Mormon college is doing likewise and might be a buyer for the campus. Meanwhile the fight moves along
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Rumor on the Disney boards is that it is the future site of Disney's America theme park! <<<
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Well, one could have some fun by using the names of their known attractions and appending “dot edu”
Cinderella.edu
Countrybear.edu
Dumbo.edu
EnchantedTales.edu
Frontierland.edu
It’saSmallWorld.edu
LibertySquare.edu
MadTeaParty.edu
Peter Pan’s,edu
PrinceCharmingRegal.edu
SplashMountain.edu - my favorite with Sweet Br’er Fox and Sweet Br’er Bear as Deans
Tomorrowland,edu
Except for the last one, many could have been appropriate in that land of fantasy. The best part is that they will have a height requirement to enroll!
Not fantasy land but another analysis: Again, some people believe anything that may be said before investigating. Full disclosure my D is at another college… This is more on the level of knowing how to judge a BOD; how to know that my donations in the future will go to the mission.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/06/18/saving-sweet-briar/
Excellent and accurate analysis. SBC had issues to deal with but they were not insurmountable. It might now take real sacrifices by faculty and staff for a few years and maybe deeper changes. Changes that would not go down easily with some of the alumnae. But they need to be explored more/again. But time is awasting.
I’m curious: From those of you who believe that SBC’s leadership was wrong/derelict/malicious/whatever in closing down the college, what’s the motive? That is, why did they want to commit a malicious act? I’ve seen all sorts of dark hinting on this thread and in opinion columns on the net, but I’ve not seen any concrete claims on any alleged reasons behind the act. Please enlighten me.
Doing your best to run an institution which is swimming against the tide in terms of demographics, finances, consumer preference, etc. is hard. I don’t think there was any malice on the part of the board or leadership. Just an unreasonable optimism that single sex higher ed would “come back” as a trend. And that an “off the beaten track” location would become appealing to large numbers of young women. And somehow magically the enrollment numbers would materialize due to outreach, discounting, etc.
And then it didn’t, and it became a race against time- the fixed costs vs. the variable costs. How long to keep up the game knowing that any Freshman you fail to enroll this year is an empty seat and zero dollars for four years. So the spiral begins.
It’s hard to run a solo medical practice today as an owner/physician. It’s hard to run a quality Pre-K with zero government funding or matches or subsidies. There are all sorts of organizations which used to thrive which are now dinosaurs. No malice-- just the drum beat of time marching ahead.
Well some seem to think it’s to sell to Disney.
People seem in awe of a 90 mil endowment, not realizing how many other small or women’s colleges surpass that. And not looking at costs and problems with discounting and inflow. How is this really different than closing a business with declining sales, not making cost? There are examples where employees bought out a company. But SSB can’t do that on 16 mil.
FYI - Southern Va. U. involved the Mormons taking over a bankrupt college. Many of their students come from Utah.
Liberty U. is making most of their money from online courses. The head of LU said they had offered to help Sweetbriar set up online courses.
I am amazed that people think SBC’s leadership is wrong/derelict/malicious/whatever in closing it down. Colleges are businesses. xiggi provided an excellent analysis upstream in this thread.
If you are not privy to what it takes to run a school, you may not be able to wrap your head around it. Trying to meet all the requirements of every group involved (students, faculty, staff, physical plant, parents, federal government, lawyers, etc.) takes manpower and money. The fewer the students, the less the money … but not necessarily the less the demands on and from these groups. Some schools are able to attract an abundance of full-pay international students to fill their seats … this requires extra resources that stretch a small school. Some schools are offering online programs to boost enrollment … this doesn’t seem to mesh with the SBC model. At some point, the tipping point comes where tuition cannot be increased to pay for all the things required. The endowment will be tapped into at that point. Restricted endowment funds may very well not be available to fund what must be funded, and depending on drawing down endowment funds to pay current expenses is not the solution. In the end, the board decided it’s just not sustainable.
How many long-time businesses in your community have shut their doors in the past decade? More than a few, I’ll bet. Schools are not magically able to keep their doors open in the face of unrelenting economic problems any more than businesses are able to do so.
Maybe SBC could continue its educational mission and leverage its established name & campus facilities by reinventing itself as a boarding school. For a boarding school, a rural location is not the huge minus it is for a college. And SBC’s student body size is the magnitude of a boarding school.
FYI
Size of boarding school student bodies:
http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/largest_student_body/sort/1
For rich families in China, posh overseas boarding school for the kid (singular) is the new must have item to go with that Hermes Birkin bag
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d7ZlKYCz9PA
dfbdfb–not all bad mgt need be evil or malicious. It can just be stupid. Blindingly amazingly stupid. I know very well of one not SBC. Not talking about Disney deal either. That’s looney. But ending all female should be on the table. Might end discussion right there too.
Latest on buyer rumors. 1 might make sense.
“Liberty U. is making most of their money from online courses. The head of LU said they had offered to help Sweetbriar set up online courses.”
That’s fair, and some private U’s without strong existing brands have been successful with this (Southern New Hampshire U comes to mind). That said, Liberty is not a great model for SBC, IMHO, despite geographic proximity. It has a built-in community of 75 million-plus evangelical Americans who were already looking to trust Liberty. Outstanding non-profit business model. I don’t know what SBC’s angle would be.
Sometimes, things don’t work out even with good management and good ideas and good execution.
Or it could be that the saving opportunity was missed five or ten or fifteen years ago. In which case a prior management group would be the ones responsible for the failure.
Also, the current rally efforts of the alums would not be taking place unless the current management announced the closure decision. If the rally succeeds (pretty unlikely), then the closure decision would wind up being the catalyst for saving the school.
Impossible to tell where the roads not taken would have led.
Or maybe not.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/06/20/deal-will-save-sweet-briar-college
Details
Wow! But who will enroll? They have no freshman class. Will students who planned to transfer return? What about faculty and staff who have relocated and taken other jobs? Will be fascinating to follow.
It will be open for another year, but it is uncertain after that.
^^^Wow.