Mary Washington used to be the women’s college of UVa.
There really is no “UVa system” to join. UVa only is in Cville, other than some facilities that offer grad courses. There is a small affiliated college in far western VA. Mary Wash was temporarily part of UVa in order to help keep the University all male (until circa 1970)…
SBC said they tried to find a college to merge with, but no one wanted them. If they wanted to be a branch of a public college, they would be better off trying to partner with JMU or Radford.
How are they going to attract any moderately good faculty if they are not even sure how long or in what form they are going to be open?
Same for students. I couldn’t in good conscience recommend Sweet Briar to a HS senior right now. What majors are there going to be available? Is it going to be open in 4 years? Is the faculty any good, etc…
I thought someone site said all 3 (?) engineering faculty had found other positions. (Faculty reality is one of the non-topics.) They could hire adjuncts in some depts, but what about kids who needed a last course or two and no one was able to offer those? A sticky wicket.
I highly doubt that a college with a couple hundred students could sustain an engineering major…I don’t know how they did it with 500 students.
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My daughter briefly considered Sweet Briar. She is now at another women's college (Wellesley). For all of the previous poster's talk about Vera Bradley and a beautiful campus and healthy eating, the fact remains that at the end of the day a college is for education and opportunity, and in the space of women's colleges, SB simply couldn't provide anything that matched up to what Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, etc had to offer<<<
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Pizzagirl,
I am excited that your daughter is attending Wellesley and doing well. However, I assume that her high school GPA was NOT 2.47, which my daughter’s was. I imagine your daughter’s SATs were much higher than around 500 per test. Just because a student is academically average doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have access to an excellent education. At one time in history, higher education necessarily was kept for the academically elite but that is no longer the case There are many, many colleges available that are willing to educate average students like my wonderful arts daughter.
The soon to be former Board of Directors of Sweet Briar felt that there were too many Pell Grant recipients and 1st Generation College students to keep the school worthwhile. They gave wealthy families bigger discounts than they were willing to give less privileged students and essentially drove those students away. Happily, most alumnae disagreed with this prejudice and elitism and mounted an historic battle to take back the college. They, and those of us who supported them, made history this week.
We don’t know WHY the former board was so insistent on closing Sweet Briar and conspiracy theories abound. Over and over again they repulsed offers of assistance from people and organizations well placed to help Sweet Briar stay open. My personal guess is that they were bigoted against average students, students from blue collar backgrounds, students of color, and students with alternative sexual lifestyles. Happily the new management does NOT AGREE!
If you know an average student that would like to attend a woman’s college with a fierce and dedicated alumnae suggest Sweet Briar college. Holla, holla, holla…there is nothing they cannot doooo!
Well, for most fields (engineering is one of the exceptions where mid-cycle hires actually happen) the faculty hiring cycle was over when SBC announced their closure, thus freezing most of their faculty out of positions at other colleges until fall 2017 (for jobs to be announced late summer/fall of this year). Therefore, most of the faculty don’t have anywhere to go…
…this year. If SBC stays open, any faculty there who aren’t either actively on the market or retiring this coming year may be lacking in the sort of intelligence one expects of college faculty.
Is Virginia really that much of a lalaland?
I’m not even sure how you turn the ship around. The tuition discounting had reached a level to elicit yield that it implies a loss of students wanting to attend Sweet Briar that could afford to pay full tuition. Drawing down on the endowment to cover the deficits is simply a road map for worsening finances. Why the saving Sweet Briar crowd thinks that suddenly they will find 200-500 students simply to get going, when the school probably needs closer to 1,000 as a goal, that are willing to pay $50,000 a year boggles my mind.
Actually, many faculty have left already, even in Humanities. I read one English prof. is going to a prep. school, and many took non tenure track positions. http://www.roanoke.com/news/education/higher_education/sweet-briar-college-students-faculty-debate-whether-to-return/article_3a09e607-7316-526a-9dc8-48a54876ddcb.html
Even for adjuncts, I doubt they could hire anyone right now to replace those who took other positions.
Sheesh, with the la-dee-da.
Guess we’ll see if the circuit court approves.
I’m a bit confused - is it elitist or inherently wrong for me to think that someone with a HS GPA below B (3.0) really might not be happy at college, or at least a traditional college where you get grades and are expected to work?
I know a state college that takes kids who are not college prep and have a 2.0 GPA or higher, and SAT 1500 or higher. The 4-year graduation rate is 25%. The 6-year graduation rate is 50%. The freshman retention rate is 80%. I have heard of kids who fail courses 3 or more times and each time come back to try to pass and move on to the next level.
I do not get all the brouhaha about student debt being concurrent with telling every single HS student no matter their ability level or interest in academics that they must go to college.
Perhaps really what some kids want, or parents want for them, is a post-HS private school where they can get a liberal arts education without worrying about ability or grades.
With respect to the latter, many jobs that used to just require a high school diploma now require a college degree, even if the jobs do not require any specific learning that one does in college.
Along those lines, I thought about all the parents who come to the forums looking for a nurturing, hand-holding, non-traditional college atmosphere for their kids with mental or learning disabilities. That might be an area that Sweet Briar could try to capture and grow because it feels to me like a growing market (kids that maybe would not have been college bound a decade or so ago) on the order of Landmark - but I’m not sure they could do this as a single sex. Landmark is up to $60,000 so there might be market share to undercut them cost-wise. I fear that the Save Sweet Briar crowd is really just wanting the sameness of whatever was and it’s highly probable that whatever was is not sustainable and the Saving Sweet Briar crowd will find themselves in the very same shoes as the folks that are going to be leaving in the hand-over.
It does not have to cost $50K a year to provide a good LA education. $15K should be plenty plus R&B.
Well, someone with a sub-3.0 high school GPA “might not be happy at college,” but then again they might find college far more congenial than high school. A young man I know recently graduated cum laude from Northeastern University, which he got into by the skin of his teeth. His high school GPA was 2.7 and he ranked in the 50th percentile in his class at a mediocre rural public school.
These aren’t ideal “stats” for a college-bound kid but there are late-bloomers who can thrive at a place like Sweet Briar…or Northeastern.
We are toying with the idea of Landmark for my second-oldest, but honestly he has never thrived when put “with his population”.
Instead, there are colleges like Rutgers and others that have special courses as “training sessions” for college, that are run like regular college courses but have “helpers” for the students.
I think a guy wrote a well-regarded book about just such colleges. Even many here ate it up. Most be the horses that gets everyone so riled about SBC. Horses are a big deal around Virginia. Part of the culture. Even LU recently built a riding center.
http://www.liberty.edu/campusrec/equestrian/index.cfm?PID=27871
Funny how overall mindset here changed once the school decided to stay open…
Before closing: “Ohhh poor students… what a terrible rash decision on school’s part. They should stay open!”
After deciding to stay open: “What were those clowns thinking? They won’t make it…”
Make up your minds people! Lol
Of course, announcing closure and then staying open may be the worst of both worlds.