Cazenovia Faculty is closing on the finish of the spring semester. In response to Inside Increased Ed, the school missed a bond cost as a result of monetary stresses exacerbated by inflation and the COVID pandemic.
Cazenovia Faculty is a liberal arts school positioned within the city of Cazenovia in upstate New York. It has about 800 college students. The college was based as a Methodist seminary virtually 100 years in the past.
Over time, Cazenovia has gone by means of a number of metamorphoses and title adjustments. From 1904 till 1931, Cazenovia functioned as each a seminary and a secondary faculty. The Methodists withdrew church sponsorship within the Forties, and the varsity transitioned right into a junior school. Within the Nineteen Eighties, the varsity grew to become a four-year school and commenced providing graduate applications in 2019.
In brief, this plucky little school has accomplished its finest to stay related and to alter with the occasions. In the end, nonetheless, Cazenovia could not make a go of it.
Cazenovia is primarily a liberal arts faculty. For instance, the school has majors in Liberal Research and Particular person Research. What sort of job will a Cazenovia graduate get with a level in these fields?
Like many obscure liberal arts faculties round the US, Cazenvovia’s attendance prices cannot be justified. Tuition for this educational 12 months is greater than $36,000. Room and board are one other $15,000. Who of their proper thoughts would pay $50,000 a 12 months to attend this tiny school with a 6-year commencement price of solely 59 p.c?
However perhaps the prices aren’t that prime. The U.S. Information & World Report factors out that Cazenovia’s sticker value is beneath the nationwide common. In response to that supply, the web value for federal mortgage recipients is barely about $19,000.
That is nonetheless excessive. When room, board, and residing bills are added, the overall value to attend Cazenovia for federal mortgage recipients is round $34,000 per educational year–34 grand to attend a university with solely 800 college students.
Throughout the US, there are a whole bunch of obscure, costly schools struggling to outlive. How have they held on for so long as they’ve?
A latest examine by the Authorities Accountability Workplace gives some clues. In response to the GAO report, many colleges are making monetary help gives to potential college students that misrepresent the precise prices. Particularly, GAO discovered that 41 p.c of faculties in its examine didn’t embrace the web value of attendance. And half the colleges reported a web value that didn’t embrace key prices.
For instance, many colleges embrace pupil loans and even Guardian PLUS loans as “pupil help,” thus blurring the road between grants and loans. Unsophisticated households might not notice that the supposedly beneficiant monetary help supply they acquired from an costly non-public faculty would possibly require them to tackle burdensome ranges of debt.
I am not saying Cazenovia misrepresented the precise value of attendance. Its monetary help gives might have been completely candid and completely in line with finest practices.
If that’s the case, it’s within the minority. The GAO “estimate[d] most schools don’t present college students all the info obligatory of their monetary help gives to understand how a lot they might want to pay for school.”
