[Alumni-chat] FW: questioning basic principles?

[t Sanford]

jim, i will do the research tomorrow but i have this bug in my brain that says there are at least ten slarc's with less than 1000 students. At the 1000 student level and above we need only look at my home town favorite Reed. Reed has approximately 1200 students (a number that has been in decline for several years) a students "pay" a mere 60% of what the education would actually cost and this is a student body whose parents have substantial assets on the whole (in my short time there my housemates included the blacksheep son of a major food conglomerate, an ambassador's son and the son of a member of the US Senate whose family had more than one senator in their line. I briefly dated (but alas did not capture the heart of) a mail order marketing heiress). The tuition at Harvard, though very high, does not cover the actual cost of educating the undergraduate student body, again, it is the wealth of the endowment, not enrollment that ends up making a college selective.  My comment about the simplistic nature of your question is that this board and this alumni body have gone around and around for nine months on the issue. We believe, still that no other institution offers what Antioch does even in its enfeebeled state. That it can recover is bourne out by the numbers of information requests admissions get every year. The problem has been conversion. Our facilities are perhaps the worst in higher ed (short of the University of DC) but we still have 300 students who are willing to pony up every last asset their parents posses to meet our shcokingly jogh tuition! That means the market exists but only the diehards are coming. If we can move to a place where capital improvements does not equal deferred maintainece our numbers would go up. If you think this is a question of the chicken or the egg, I would suggest that it can not be shown that the definitive downturn in Antioch's financial position was tied to declining standards of enrollment or graduation but rather in the general down turn in the US economy circa 1974 and the stock market crash of 2001. Also, as I posted long ago, Antioch's decline in enrollement has been less than the decline in the college age population so it is not a question of a shrinking demographic. travis
 

> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 21:42:33 -0400> From: jimjaf at gmail.com> To: travissanford at msn.com> Subject: questioning basic principles?> > Hi,> and thanks for your response to my post. I could say if there was> one lesson Antioch taught us, it was to question basic principles, but> that might lead us to a tangential discussion.> > it has seemed to me, and I've said so, that the key here is> product. Creating an attractive educational institution where kids> are battering down the doors to get in. We call that a selective> school, which Antioch defiitely isn't at the moment. Instead, it> appears that for the past decade or so, fewer than a thousand people> have enrolled in classes in Yellow Springs and the number applying> hasn't been substantially greater that that. Suffice to say Antioch> hasn't been turning away most of its applicants as Reed or Oberlin> routinely do. I don't know why that is, but am very aware that my> kids expressed no interest in going there, nor did the kids of any of> my Antioch classmates, all of whom recall their time in YSO fondly.> obviously any liberal arts college subsidize the students to some> degree. That's how they work. Obviously a big endowment is better> than a small one. But endowment, like enrollment, reflects enthusiasm> and excitement among various constituencies -- alums and potential> students to name two key ones.> I have no sense of such excitement from either group, which leads> me to ask whether the college, irrespective of our memories, is> viable. Bickering about governance, legalities and, god save us, news> coverage in the NY Times doesn't address that question.> To put it as baldly as I can, I cannot believe that a college> with such an endowment is viable with fewer than 1000 students, to> give you an arbitrary number, and I haven't seen anything in all the> posts during the past few months about any vision that would boost> enrollment.> Think about it, if folks immediately gave $10 million for the> endowment fund, an improbable outcome, that would generate $400,000> year in operating income, which would basically mean that student> tuition would have to cover all but $4000 per student , in the> extremely unlikely event that everyone enrolled paid the full rack> rate. If enrollment grows, the subsidy obviously drops, but the unit> cost declines also. So bigger is better and that requires an> attractive product.> I guess I missed the email explaining what that product was, but> would be most interested in reading it.> > Jim Jaffe

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