When Sweet Briar College abruptly announced that it would close earlier this year, despite having an $85 million endowment and a committed alumnae base, it raised the question of whether small, private four-year colleges are viable enterprises in the 21st century. If a school with as many resources at its disposal as Sweet Briar could not make it, what school could?
The tables turned when Sweet Briar alumnae and faculty rallied together to save the 114-year-old all-women’s college from closure. Their efforts resulted in a court victory that will keep the college open for at least one more year, proving the school’s detractors and pessimists alike wrong.
While Sweet Briar captured national interest for its dramatic tale of averted disaster, the core problem was a prosaic one. The school’s enrollment numbers were low, and the school was not taking in enough money in tuition.
Declining enrollment at a tuition-driven school is a deadly combination. The fate of many schools is a testament to that, such as St. Paul’s College, which closed in 2013, or Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore, which closed this summer. Approximately 25 colleges have shut down in the past decade, and more than 40 have merged with other institutions.
While some schools are not nimble enough to survive in hard times, others thrive in adversity. One such school is Becker College, located in Worcester, Mass., a state where competition is rife among institutions of higher learning. In the Boston area alone, there are 53 schools, and Worcester, less than 50 miles west of Boston, is the center of a consortium of 12 colleges and universities.
Becker’s story is all the more remarkable because its transformation occurred during the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession. At a time when many schools were simply focused on regrouping, Becker underwent a renaissance.
Starting from the bottom
