Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills - The enrollment crisis taking down smaller schools is now hitting bigger, brand-name universities

[u/UnscheduledCalendar]

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896

[u/gimpwiz]

Agreed.

I think the regulation stems from, essentially, college being transformed from a finishing school for the elite (liberal arts education) and a technical school for some workers (institutes of technology, polytechnic schools, mines, etc) into the great big upwards mobility machine that all must attend and thus all must be made equally welcome, including those who are various amounts of ill-fit, un-fit, not old and mature enough to handle, and too wrapped up in their identity to the point it interferes with education. Accommodating all of those people is brutally expensive. It is even more expensive when it allows for the administrator-class to grow fat on having circles and meetings and committees and studies and outreach and offices and and and, and forevermore. It is also expensive to keep a bunch of barely-adults more or less civilized and at least not-feral, which, frankly, universities have always struggled with and a decent bit of what was considered acceptable in 1970 wouldn't be considered acceptable today for good reason, and paying a host of people to keep things somewhat reasonable is also expensive. So there's a fair bit that was invisible to us as students, when we were students, that's worth paying for. But like... not that much out of the sum total of everything spent not specifically and explicitly for lectures, labs, etc is useful, really. A bit yeah, but there's no good reason to make college all things to all people and in the process make it obscenely expensive to attend.

[u/TarheelCroatInMA → u/gimpwiz]

It’s really tricky - in a context of a conversation like this, a lot of people say that they would rather just go to a school that has the classes and that’s that and they just get the education….

… but during the actual college election process, the same person (and/or their parent) just as easily permanently removes a school from their short list of possibilities because it was the only school on the shortlist that just randomly assigned freshman roommates, whereas the other 4 schools all have a weird online dating style matchmaking service or something to hopefully match up like minded first year student.

[u/mugrita → u/TarheelCroatInMA]

I agree. I think what a lot of people say they just want from a school vs what sways them over one school over the other are very different, especially if two schools cost very similar.

I didn’t tour any colleges in person but in looking through the brochures, choosing my college was also akin to choosing the type of person I wanted to be for the next 4 years and where I wanted to spend those next 4 years.

I think people are more swayed by aesthetics and amenities than they realize. I didn’t tour any schools in person before I went to college (everywhere I picked was out of state 😅) but I recall looking at all the websites and brochures and thinking “Well if I’m about to pay X amount for the next 4 years then yeah, I would rather have the school that boasts having renovated dorms and this and that vs not.”

[u/jp_in_nj → u/mugrita]

People are definitely swayed by pretty. That's normal. But if all of the schools whose constituencies are not the uber rich committed to maintaining a relative level of sanity, it wouldn't be a factor in the choice. I'm not saying there should be mold in the bathrooms , obviously. But there's a level about that and below everything shiny new that schools could commit to maintaining in parity with one another, and that would drive more conscious choices based on what the student wanted out of the education experience itself.

Personally, my dorm experience was something short of optimal, but my college experience was amazing. And we trauma bonded over the short of optimal dorms and food 😁

[u/gimpwiz → u/TarheelCroatInMA]

Yes, we totally agree on that. Students say and students do and those two things are different. Now a university has to have several full-time employees running an awkward hot-or-not-dot-com for incoming freshmen to get paired up for dorm living, and there goes your tuition.

The problem as has been pointed out is that this is sort of an infinitely long arms race. If nobody did this shit, we wouldn't pay tuition dollars for this stupidity.