Birmingham Southern College always had a very competitive baseball program. I feel bad for the players and coaches that have been caught up in this mess. It appears there was very bad leadership within the administration and the State of Alabama elected not to bail them out with a loan. They announced that they will shut down the school May 31st of this year.
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This is just the tip if the iceberg. There will be a lot more of this in the next 5-10 years.
Why do you think there will be a lot m
@Master P posted:This is just the tip if the iceberg. There will be a lot more of this in the next 5-10 years.
Why do you think that?
@Dadof3 posted:Why do you think there will be a lot m
Why do you think that?
This is a good article taking about enrollment/finance issues.
@Dadof3 posted:Why do you think there will be a lot m
Why do you think that?
Master P is correct. There are going to be a lot of school that start to hit some financial hardships. There are many issues. The first of which is the pending decline in student enrollment. From 2007 the birth rate dropped 23%, and the demographic that supplies most of the College and University students (White Americans) saw the greatest drop in birth rate.
Another issue has been the negative impact that shutting down college campuses for the pandemic and yet continuing to pay the high price tenured faculty cut into a lot of the reserves and endowments of a lot of the smaller schools.
Here is a nice article that talks about the decline in enrollment.
@anotherparent posted:
How does a baseball coach at BSC possibly manage to coach a team under those circumstances? Difficult situation.
@Master P posted:This is a good article taking about enrollment/finance issues.
In addition there has been an epidemic growth in student loans fueled by the government spending and young people and their uninformed parents who have not realized that their son/daughter getting a degree in History or Social Science that their NPV (Net Present Value) for their $100K loan is underwater and no chance of getting a return on this "investment" and people are waking up that it might have been better to go to a trade school or JC first....and to not get into politics we have politicians wanting to stay in power by giving away our hard earned tax dollars to those who made those poor investments; paid by the plumbers, electricians, construction workers, and those of us who planned to pay for their sons/daughters education. This fueled the dramatic increase in college costs driven by un-bridled administrators investing in VP's of DEI and other such BS which is going to bring down the whole pyramid scheme.
More to come.
....mic drop...
BOF
At least 52 public or nonprofit colleges have closed, merged, or announced closures or mergers since March 2020.
There’s also the fact that a lot of major companies are no longer requiring degrees. They are realizing experience is just as valuable, And a 22-year-old that has been working for their company for four years is probably a lot more qualified than a 22-year-old that just graduated from college.
@baseballhs posted:There’s also the fact that a lot of major companies are no longer requiring degrees. They are realizing experience is just as valuable, And a 22-year-old that has been working for their company for four years is probably a lot more qualified than a 22-year-old that just graduated from college.
When looking a colleges one primary consideration should be how much endowments they have on the balance sheet, not if Johnny has a shot at playing SS.
JMO
@BOF posted:When looking a colleges one primary consideration should be how much endowments they have on the balance sheet, not if Johnny has a shot at playing SS.
JMO
A huge part of college is networking as well. Outside of going to an Ivy or similar HA which will have a nation wide (worldwide) network, going to a school no where near where you live or plan on living may not be a great choice. Part of our college research was going on LinkedIn and seeing what the local network was.
@nycdad posted:A huge part of college is networking as well. Outside of going to an Ivy or similar HA which will have a nation wide (worldwide) network, going to a school no where near where you live or plan on living may not be a great choice. Part of our college research was going on LinkedIn and seeing what the local network was.
This is one of the reason why I posted this thread. For years I read about the value in using baseball to go to an HA D3 school and continuing to play collegiate baseball. Well, Birmingham Southern was a quality HA school that had a very competitive college baseball team. I believe they have even competed in a D3 National Championship series in baseball if I remember correctly.
@Ster posted:This is one of the reason why I posted this thread. For years I read about the value in using baseball to go to an HA D3 school and continuing to play collegiate baseball. Well, Birmingham Southern was a quality HA school that had a very competitive college baseball team. I believe they have even competed in a D3 National Championship series in baseball if I remember correctly.
I don't consider them a HA D3. They have a 57% admittance rate. I don't think you're having conversations with the coaches about if they are going to help you through admissions.
@nycdad posted:I don't consider them a HA D3. They have a 57% admittance rate. I don't think you're having conversations with the coaches about if they are going to help you through admissions.
Trinity College (CT) is jokingly referred to as the safety school of the NESCAC. The acceptance rate is 36%. 57% is not HA.
D-III Fontbonne College in St. Louis has announced that it is closing. The baseball team has 55 members. They are having it rough as is the softball team. My great niece was going to attend there to play softball. This announcement shocked everyone. My great niece is a junior so she has another school that is interested in her. Unfortunately, that coaching staff is no longer coaching the program and no one knows what happened at that D-II school.
@Ster posted:For years I read about the value in using baseball to go to an HA D3 school and continuing to play collegiate baseball.
Yes, but people also have frequently talked about schools (often small colleges) that use sports to attract fee-paying students, and often have very large teams.
@BOF posted:When looking a colleges one primary consideration should be how much endowments they have on the balance sheet, not if Johnny has a shot at playing SS.
JMO
Forbes has letter-grades for fiscal solvency:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...ges/?sh=310641b71097
They give a letter grade for the financial health of hundreds of private colleges and universities, from A+ to D. Birmingham Southern has a C-, and is listed among the "Dunces" - schools whose ratings dropped a lot in one year.
Probably worth checking out if you are looking at small or private schools.
@nycdad posted:I don't consider them a HA D3. They have a 57% admittance rate. I don't think you're having conversations with the coaches about if they are going to help you through admissions.
I'm not interested in getting into a debate about who gets the tag, "HA" and who doesn't. All of these things are regional. I'm sure where you live in New York there are schools that are considered very prestigious that I have never heard of here in the deep south. I use to teach and sit on an admissions board at UAB Medical Center. I can tell you first hand that Birmingham Southern was considered a very high level academic school when it came to considering students for Medical school admissions. My field is science, so I can't comment about the business world etc... but we had a point system that was rewarded based upon where you went to undergrad. In the deep south Birmingham Southern was getting maximum point value. So, I consider that HA in this area of the country. There are plenty of schools that award meaningless degrees here in the deep south, but Birmingham Southern was not one of them. BSC had a very high favorability rating based upon the quality of the students that were being produced there. It was widely considered a very good school to consider if someone wanted to continue playing baseball but had high academic aspirations. It's closure is unfortunate.
@BOF posted:In addition there has been an epidemic growth in student loans fueled by the government spending and young people and their uninformed parents who have not realized that their son/daughter getting a degree in History or Social Science that their NPV (Net Present Value) for their $100K loan is underwater and no chance of getting a return on this "investment" and people are waking up that it might have been better to go to a trade school or JC first....and to not get into politics we have politicians wanting to stay in power by giving away our hard earned tax dollars to those who made those poor investments; paid by the plumbers, electricians, construction workers, and those of us who planned to pay for their sons/daughters education. This fueled the dramatic increase in college costs driven by un-bridled administrators investing in VP's of DEI and other such BS which is going to bring down the whole pyramid scheme.
More to come.
....mic drop...
BOF
What does Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs have to do with the dramatic rise in student loans?
It seems that you are implying that based on your status, you need to stay in your lane, granted the lane that you say the should apply to is not always available.
Note, DEI in the workplace was and is not always available.
Especially in certain unions
@CollegebaseballInsights My comment on DEI was not the fact there is DEI, and I should have been more clear. The issue is, driven by easy to obtain Federal loans, college costs have exploded, and one symptom of this are all of the frivolous departments that have sprung up at at many schools.
@BOF posted:@CollegebaseballInsights My comment on DEI was not the fact there is DEI, and I should have been more clear. The issue is, driven by easy to obtain Federal loans, college costs have exploded, and one symptom of this are all of the frivolous departments that have sprung up at at many schools.
Not to mention the extreme bloat in "administration" in all facets of education.
@BOF posted:@CollegebaseballInsights My comment on DEI was not the fact there is DEI, and I should have been more clear. The issue is, driven by easy to obtain Federal loans, college costs have exploded, and one symptom of this are all of the frivolous departments that have sprung up at at many schools.
Understood.
Highlighting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can bring out a different message. As for IMHO, DEI is required at all levels otherwise we all stay in our Silos.
As for one might say getting a undergrad degree in (Business, Sports Management, entrepreneurship) might get you a job at Enterprise.
But thanks for the clarification.
@BOF posted:In addition there has been an epidemic growth in student loans fueled by the government spending and young people and their uninformed parents who have not realized that their son/daughter getting a degree in History or Social Science that their NPV (Net Present Value) for their $100K loan is underwater and no chance of getting a return on this "investment" and people are waking up that it might have been better to go to a trade school
That is one of the reasons my 2023 got into the carpenters union. He didnt like school and didnt see the value of going into debt 100k just to play baseball
When I look at the list of colleges my first thought is… how did they survive this long???
@BOF posted:When looking a colleges one primary consideration should be how much endowments they have on the balance sheet, not if Johnny has a shot at playing SS.
JMO
Folks probably already know this but I'll mention another reason to consider colleges with a high endowment: if your child qualifies for financial aid, the student loan % of the aid package will likely be much lower. The highest endowment schools don't include loans at all in their FA packages. Students/parents can still get them on their own, but they're not part of the aid packages that these exceedingly well-endowed schools offer.
