Are Liberal Arts Colleges Doomed? The cautionary tale of Hampshire College [tr]

Washington Post ^ | October 21, 2019 | Eliza Gray

[C19fan]

Two days before classes started at Hampshire College in September, the school’s incoming first-year students — all 13 of them — attended a welcome reception in the campus’s new R.W. Kern Center. A motley mix of plaids, khakis and combat boots, the group lined up to shake hands with the college president and receive small bells — symbols of the large brass bell they’ll ring upon completing their “Division III,” the epic independent project required to graduate. If, that is, Hampshire survives long enough for them to graduate.

[Sicon]

The problem is the business model. Colleges have long counted on wealthy students to subsidize the cost of education for those who can’t afford it. But for many institutions, that is becoming untenable.

Gee, now I wonder why that model wouldn't be "tenable"... Oh, that's right, because it's SOCIALISM, and socialism has never worked, and it never will.

[11th_VA]

Sounds like future ‘Dave Ramsey’ callers with $200K student loan debt, are attending this school.

[dfwgator]

“Just mention Modern Arts, Civil Rights, or Folk Music and you’re in like Flynn!”

[TBP]

Schools like Hampshire may be. (Or Burlington.) Schools like Hillsdale aren’t.

We need some Hillsdale types to buy up control of the Burlingtons and Hampshires. America could use a lot moe Hillsdales.

[BillyBonebrake]

someone I know sent their daughter to Hampshire. She dropped out after 2 years, and now lives off her father while railing against the patriarchy.

[softwarecreator]

Love that movie

[Bookshelf]

by Furqan Nazeeri

“50% of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the US will be bankrupt in 10-15 years”. Strong words yet those are just some of the gems that HBS professor Clayton Christensen gives in this talk on disruption in higher education in which he makes this bold predication.
Then a panel of 6 presidents of small liberal arts colleges discusses the topic generally followed by Q&A and finally Professor Karen Harpp at Colgate on developing a blended online/classroom course and Professor Erland Stevens at Davidson College talk about developing online-only courses on edX.

[Vigilanteman]

“50% of the 4,000 colleges and universities in the US will be bankrupt in 10-15 years”.

I can see the following trends which will make that likely:

1. Employers are, for the first time in a generation, actually having to compete for workers. The college degree, especially a fluff course major, just isn't that important any more.
   
2. The explosive growth of on-line schooling which you are seeing advertised everywhere now will continue to push costs down. Only in the minds of a Bernie Sanders or a Lizzie Warren (and their followers) should college be a "right" with no restraints on cost.
   
3. The grist for the diploma mills will be in ever shortening supply. Already, taxpayers are beginning to rebel against school districts wanting ever increasing budgets while enrollments decline. High school kids are not automatically going into the college grist mill given (a)availability of jobs, even career path jobs, right out of high school and (b)rising debt for degrees of questionable value.

Colleges which can successfully refocus their missions to provide continuing education, useful degrees and useful research (or some combination thereof) will survive. Those which can't will fade.

[x]

Hampshire was liberal arts with the emphasis on the word “progressive.” They didn’t have much of a real curriculum or much in the way of endowment. The more established liberal arts colleges are trying to use their alumni networks to get students internships that may lead to actual jobs. Also, some of them have endowments that can cut thousands off the price tag for many students.

[DrPretorius]

The problem is that if you eventually work for any sort of multinational corporation or government bureaucracy the lack of a college degree will kill any chance you may have for upper tier promotion. You will never be elevated beyond a lower level staff employee to a management position thereby limiting your professional advancement and future pay scale. Even those who acquire college degrees by attending classes later on through night school are cut from the fast track of kids who went right from high school to college before they started to work. This sucks and is surely why our companies are going bankrupt left and right, but it is the way it is, like it or not.

[JimRed]

I’d love to buy up their campus; it’s in a beautiful location and would make for a great housing development.

Careful what you wish for...the state would probably make you convert the existing dorms to low income housing or residential rehab facilities, killing the value of any homes you built.

[Deplorable American1776]

It should be bought for a CONSERVATIVE COLLEGE...

[camle]

state LA colleges are safe, especially where democrats are in charge...the problem is that nobody - even in higher ed - knows what higher education is FOR! I worked in a college for 32 years and they can’t agree on the purpose for their existence. if you posit that they are for jobs, they balk in the strongest terms.

[Ouderkirk]

My kids will be attending the local community college with their eyes on completing the requirements of their first two years of their degree studies.

Calculus, chem, and physics are all the same in freshman and sophomore years. Why spend mega-$$$ on these courses when you can get them on the cheap.