This is because of the ongoing bomb threats and unrelated to Wittenberg's current financial situations, but Wittenberg has cancelled all home and away athletics contests involving the school through 9/22

https://x.com/WittAthletics/status/1836060283803947470

https://www.wittenberg.edu/alert

QuoteWittenberg is continuing to take precautions due to ongoing threats the University has received in recent days. As the threats continue to be assessed by Wittenberg police, local law enforcement, and the FBI, all classes and most operations will be delivered remotely until at least Sunday, Sept. 22, and on-campus activities and events are canceled.
Latest Update

After receiving new threats on Monday, Sept. 16, and in the context of ongoing threats of violence on our campus and in the Springfield community, Wittenberg will go fully remote for the rest of the week (Monday, Sept. 16-Sunday, Sept. 22). The University is taking each threat seriously, and Wittenberg Police are working closely with other law enforcement agencies to thoroughly investigate any and all threats made toward our campus, employees, and students.

All students engaged in field, clinical, or other off-campus experiences should cease attending their placement until in-person classes on campus are resumed. Faculty and staff are also expected to work remotely, except for essential employees. All academic facilities will remain locked throughout the week. The Center Dining Room (CDR) will remain open but may have limited options.

As Gregory Sager noted, recruiting young men to play football who will not play football is putting pressures where they do not need to be...on coaches and especially players and their families. Kids leave with debt and no education to speak of and often with an added sense of failure.  How this is in line with liberal arts education is a mystery to me.

Quote from: scottiedoug on September 18, 2024, 11:38:05 AMAs Gregory Sager noted, recruiting young men to play football who will not play football is putting pressures where they do not need to be...on coaches and especially players and their families. Kids leave with debt and no education to speak of and often with an added sense of failure.  How this is in line with liberal arts education is a mystery to me.

It's not. It's just in line with keeping a whole lot of schools open that probably should have closed long ago.

This is an interesting development.  Hartwick College to Slash Sticker Price to $22,000

Moving from a "high-price, high discount model to a low price, low discount model."  Kind of a CarMax no-haggle approach.  Set the tuition sticker price lower so as to attract people who either aren't savvy enough to realize the discounting that goes on in colleges or aren't interested in playing that game and then set a reasonable, but modest merit scholarship amount.  Not sure it will work (reduces the ability to make people feel they got a "deal" with a big fat scholarship, which seems to work even if it's silly), but I like transparency generally.

QuoteTuition sticker price — the publicly advertised rate — often leaves prospective students and their families in the dark about what attendance would actually cost, with one economics professor going so far as to call the number meaningless.

In 2019-20, just 16% of students at private nonprofit colleges paid their institution's full sticker price, according to a recent analysis from The Brookings Institution.

Some colleges have taken to resetting their tuition rates — lowering their published sticker price to better reflect what the average student pays after factoring in institutional scholarships.

Interim President James Mullen Jr. said Hartwick's new pricing structure is a move toward a better student experience through transparency and clarity, though officials avoided using the term reset.

"Of all the stresses students face, this has been a big one — trying to sort out the higher education tuition," Mullen said. "We're taking that stress away."

He said the simplified pricing could also help attract students to the college. In fall 2022, Hartwick enrolled just over 1,100 students, down 8.2% from about 1,200 five years prior, according to federal data.

The college's average discount rate for first-year students is currently about 70%, according to Bryan Gross, Hartwick's vice president for enrollment management.

Birmingham Southern did this about 5 years ago. You can draw your own conclusion about the effectiveness. I think it makes sense, but it didn't change a thing for B-SC.

70% discount rate?  Holy ****, that's about 20% more than average. 

I mean, it's all semantics at some point.  The last few years of its existence, ENC openly advertised everyone started at a 50% discount and then they worked up from there.  They could've cut the tuition cost by 50% and given fewer discounts.  I think schools do like to reflect actual cost of education in the price - especially if they're going after foreign students who can and do pay the sticker price, regardless of how much its inflated.

Tuition resets are increasingly common.

Millikin, Sweet Briar, Utica, Wartburg just to name a few.

North Park was on the leading edge of the trend 20 years ago, but I would not be surprised if they reset again.  They are up to $35K, relatively cheap for Illinois, but similar to many other private institutions.

I must stand corrected - according to the article Kuiper posted, the average discount rate in the '23-24 school year was 56.1%.

If Hartwick wants to address its enrollment challenges, though, it must address its retention rate.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, its retention rate after the first year is only 69%, meaning it loses nearly one in three freshmen (statistics for students who entered in Fall 2022).  The "Life Balance Credit" may be one means of addressing that challenge; while it will provide a $500 credit, the services offered (physical, emotional and professional development) may help students be more comfortable staying at the school.

According to the NCES, while over 3500 potential students applied and 2122 were approved (59.7%), only 340 of those eventually enrolled (again, Fall 2022).  And of those 340, 105 left the following year.   

So 105 were not retained -- I wonder how many of them play football.

Quote from: Pat Coleman on September 19, 2024, 09:49:53 AMSo 105 were not retained -- I wonder how many of them play football.

Of the 52 freshmen on the 2022 roster, 30 were listed on the 2023.

I am not a university business officer, but I would bet good money that the typical Division III liberal arts college is going to had a discount rate last year that was closer to 70% than 56.1%

Quote from: Ron Boerger on September 19, 2024, 09:58:33 AMOf the 52 freshmen on the 2022 roster, 30 were listed on the 2023.

It's worth pointing out that this is not the retention rate for football players at the school, merely the football team. One of Dan Swanstrom's first ever QB recruits was from Florida, left the team after his first year, and still graduated from Ithaca. This is obviously anecdotal, but leaving the football team does not mean leaving the college.

Luther College has announced that it's adding women's wrestling as a varsity sport.

Regent University, in its exploratory year in Division III, announced a $50 capital campaign "[...]to build a 31-acre sports complex, including an athletic & fitness center, NCAA basketball and volleyball courts, baseball and softball fields, tennis courts, a soccer field, an outdoor track & field, and more.  The majority of the school's (self-reported) 13,000 students are online learners (according to NCES, only 8.5% of the undergraduate population in Fall '22 was not enrolled in any distance education) and the school, which according to NCES enrolled 2382 full-time undergraduates in that time frame, awarded 636 Bachelor's degrees that school year.

According to a release from earlier this year, Christopher Newport is their "sponsoring institution".  It's not clear to me if that sponsorship is only for the exploratory year or if it will be extended to actually being accepted into the NCAA (you must have a sponsor to join the Division).

The school currently supports ten sports - basketball, XC, soccer, T&F, and volleyball (M/W for all).