Many Small Private Colleges Are Doomed

Ryan McMaken:

Needless to say, its hard to take advantage of economies of scale with an institution that has only a few hundred students. The overheard costs of old buildings alone must be enormous.

And from a student’s point of view, it’s hard to see why many of them would want to drop everything for 4 years and move to a small town in the middle of nowhere to attend a tiny college with few resources, and which few people have even heard of outside the surrounding region.

Even worse is the fact that these small private colleges tend to be incredibly expensive. Nowadays, few people have the resources and leisure time to pay $80,000 for an education at a small college in a small town where there are few opportunities for earning income to supplement one’s living expenses.

Indeed, many of these colleges have more the feel of a resort rather than a serious educational institution. Many of them are in bucolic settings with old-timey buildings that help one re-enact “the college experience” one sees in television shows and movies. And in the end, for those who earn degrees of little value, such as a women’s studies degree, this is essentially what an “education” at these institutions amounts to: a very costly four-year vacation from the realities of the world.