New leadership best in the biz.
http://chronicle.com/article/Sweet-Briars-No-Nonsense/231075/
Staying/going
http://chronicle.com/article/Sweet-Briar-Students-and/231069/
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Guess we'll see if the circuit court approves.<<<
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That happened yesterday and it explains all the dancing around the empty coffin:
Bedford County Circuit Judge James Updike approved the mediated settlement to three suits filed to stop the private women’s college’s board of directors from permanently closing Sweet Briar.
The stay of execution does not change anything to the market position of the school. The year in purgatory will see the increased spending from the endowment and the purported influx to the tune of 12MM by the newly involved group of alumnae – if they are able to convert pledges into dollars.
As far as academic offering, it will simply continue an unavoidable descent into mediocrity. In a world where a leading all-female school such Mt Holyoke constantly has to reinvent itself to parlay its academic status into domestic paying customers with decent qualifications, it is hard to see what image a “new” SBC will project. Comments --see a few posts above-- appear to show displeasure with the school resenting low pay, low qualified students as well as the discounting. Not sure how those different items fit into one coherent argument.
The new leaders believe that emotions can replace the cold and hard facts of a competitive academic landscape. They are thrilled to reopen the spigot of nonsensical funding (and ignore what it has meant to the school in the past decade) and believe they can do better. Where that “better” will come from is a huge question mark. Will the new BOD not want to insulate themselves from liability by … hiring a new stable of consultants to deliver the enrollment magic? Do they really believe that a bunch of amateurs will do better than the previous stable of the … same?
If there were not potential victims --read naïve freshwomen-- this would be a comedy. Now it has all the makings of tragi-comedy.
There are hundreds if not thousands of choices for 2.5 GPA kids - Sweet Briar will need a stronger plan than simply looking for upper middle class to upper class women who don’t need financial aid with 2.5 GPAs…or at least they have to find get commitments from enough to pay the bills and modestly grow the endowment.
SB shouldn’t be discounting its academics, no matter how.much some parent and kid want a pretty bucolic campus for a reach kid. And then complain the school isn’t discounting costs enough.
Sorry, that one really gets me. And the idea it should become a precollege or remedial. How many of you know this place, what it used to really be and still could be?
And no, some if us haven’t changed our tune… The school diluted itself. It won’t climb up by reaching lower.
And that was followed by an anecdote about someone who did much better at college than in high school.
Yes, it happens—but not often. There are outliers in any population, but they’re outliers—and drafting policies and procedures for the general population based on them is doomed to failure.
[Edited to correct a typo.]
Where’s the money? That’s what I keep wondering. I don’t see enough in this current plan. They’ll have to get a lot more if it’s going to work. Where? Barrons, I predict that if SB does stay open, you’ll pay for it in your state tax bill. That’s the only way I can see, unless there is a billionaire alumna who hasn’t been tapped yet.
The new president is the real deal, and if anyone can achieve a turnaround it is him.
" They gave wealthy families bigger discounts than they were willing to give less privileged students and essentially drove those students away."
How’s that? Almost half the students were Pell recipients. That’s driving them away? And even if they had driven them away, Pell-recipient students don’t keep a private college open.
The new president does seem like the perfect resume to pull off a stunning turnaround. If he’s willing to give it a go, then presumably he sees some path to success.
It will be quite interesting to see what kind of plan he and the SSB types settle on. Single sex or coed? Keep the horses or shoot them? Go upmarket for dollars and academics? Or focus on lower SES students? No one knows what the right plan is. Or if any plan will work. And then, of course, the chosen plan has to be executed. If it works, then announcing the closing will turn out to be the thing that saved the school.
Still seems like Hail Mary odds to me.
Well, clearly they can’t do what they have been doing because it wasn’t working 
I wondered, and have been able to find no reference, why the media and website called Jimmy Jones the interim president…always the interim president, the board must have been struggling or failing at finding someone to take-over the presidency which makes you wonder about the stability of the college. It made sense to me to name Jones interim since Jones’ wife was a Sweet Briar alum and Jones could step in for the short term.
^^“Still seems like Hail Mary odds to me.”
Yes, but those are the kinds of passes that win games.
We’ll just pick this up in a year. I can tell some are upset at calling it so wrong.
Parker announced her resignation in April 2014, not nearly enough time to find a permanent person for that fall, one who could complete and transition her/his own current position. Jones was retiring from Trinity. He began in August 2014.
^^ As long as you have both a QB who can throw and someone who can catch the ball in a crowd.
Jones might be able to bring some of his Bridgewater magic, but a school such as SBC will need a lot more than a single charismatic leader to move out of the ICU. Presidents are often turned into glorified salespeople who have to sell a product and raise money. In theory, augmenting the number of students should be doable, and especially since it could not get lower, but the key will be to not only find enough applicants but applicants who are admitted (incredibly easy as schools that accept almost everyone with a pulse) but also enroll without the lure of extremely high financial aid.
It remains that the options that are viable remain pretty poor. They already tried scratching the bottom of the barrel in both academic and financial qualifications with the known results. No amount of lipstick will embellish the pig, even if one wastes close to 30 million in the process.
Only a complete overhaul of the school could bring a slim chance of success. Too large a campus, too large a faculty, too much of deferred liabilities, and too few students with only a handful of competitive students. One can dream but it is a pipe dream in 2015!
“Yes, but those are the kinds of passes that win games.”
Yes, but you catch the hail mary pass and you’ve won the game. To keep SBC viable requires a long-term supply - of students, of professors willing to stay amidst turmoil, of a cash inflow.
The niche of being all women isn’t enough.
You have to know I agree that “scratching the bottom of the barrel in both academic and financial qualifications” was idiotic. They had- and needed more- higher achieving kids, already ready to hit the ground running. That’s not exclusively about family wealth. It has to do with independent and driven students.
The current point should be to revitalize, not restore. They need to play to their strengths- and they have them and remaining potential. It just beats me why we aren’t seeing ideas come out of SSB. Maybe barrons can find that for us. My kids went to a small all-girls prep that’s making the same mistake, focusing on single gender, not the magnitude of the academic possibilities.
It’s business sense that you don’t seek to be one of the herd of schools barely distinguishing themselves from one another. Friendships and love of campus shouldn’t be the target hallmarks.
The example should be Wellesley. Not MHC.
Yes. When visiting women’s colleges, it felt very evident that MHC was “behind” Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr. It felt as though it was resting on historical prestige.
Imo, Wellesley is in a class of its own. It has its own clear draw.
^And in 2 years it might have a new president speaking at commencement. (Of the country, that is!)
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There are hundreds if not thousands of choices for 2.5 GPA kids - Sweet Briar will need a stronger plan than simply looking for upper middle class to upper class women who don't need financial aid with 2.5 GPAs...or at least they have to find get commitments from enough to pay the bills and modestly grow the endowment.<<<
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Momofthreeboys,
My daughter’s GPA was 2.47…not 2.5. Believe it or not, that is a huge difference when trying to find an acceptable college. Our requirements?
- Less than 3000 students
- Residential college where students live on campus all four years
- Most classes with less than 20 students
- Most students graduate in 4 years.
- Interesting and accessible profs....we used the evaluation from the Princeton Review print book.
- Writing program with instructors that have been published in three genres. Tiered classes, visiting writer program, workshops. Capstone project.
- Theatre program that puts on at least 4 plays a year at least one of them Shakespeare. (Sadly, I think SBC has gone to Shakespeare every other year)
Momofthreeboys, you might be able to find THOUSANDS of programs with those requirements, but I could not and I doubted if my Very Non Academic child would do well at the much larger universities that would accept her. I found about 30 colleges for Annabel. She applied to 20 of them and got into 3…Sweet Briar College, Lynchburg College, and Millikin College… Sweet Briar was the best of them for her with the added advantage of being a woman’s college. She was waitlisted at Cornell College and Bennington but when she was accepted at Sweet Briar she took her name off those lists. Not because they are not AMAZING colleges…we just prefer women’s education.
Annabel’s roommates turned out to be extraordinary students who graduated Magna Cum Laude and got into Phi Betta Kappa. Probably their seriousness in their studies helped Annabel with her own.