How many schools will drop lacrosse?

[Farfromgeneva]

Not to pick on them but why is High Point so stable? My understanding is they binged on debt to build a stupid over the top campus and haven’t really stayed on projections for endowment growth.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Going through a university budget will really make you question your (actually their) sanity. The number of "associate director of people with itchy left elbows" types that all make solid six-figure incomes tells you all you need to know about why the cost of higher ed has skyrocketed in comparison to other costs.....

I suspect that many universities are going to struggle to survive at all, let alone maintain athletics.

Lots of 2020 graduates thinking hard about a gap year.

Colleges were under a lot of scrutiny before, COVID and distance learning is a bright light into some of the remaining dark areas that we had been lulled into taking at face value.

Mark my words - the internet is about to do to non top-100 colleges what it did to journalism.

Have you polled college students and professors?

This school is going under?

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ucf-3954

[Farfromgeneva]

I’m sure he means private.

But it’s funny how UF, FL St and Miami are major athletics schools and a university with nearly 60,000 students isn’t in a major conference. It’s almost 1.5x state capital of VT, Burlington. Heck it’s 1/3 the size of Providence.

[Farfromgeneva]

Was hoping to find something, here’s a recent(ish) continuing disclosed from HPU relative to a muni bond issuance

https://emma.msrb.org/ER1262542-ER986111-ER1388239.pdf

https://emma.msrb.org/ER1262542-ER986111-ER1388238.pdf

[LaxPundit07]

Not to pick on them but why is High Point so stable? My understanding is they binged on debt to build a stupid over the top campus and haven’t really stayed on projections for endowment growth.

Not picking on them at all. Totally valid question. Nido has invested a great deal in athletics, particularly the lacrosse programs. The sport and the stereotypical families involved in the sport are the exact demographic he wants at his institution. He is always touting the extraordinary and finer things in life. Hence the steak house on campus, etc. If, and a big if, High Point has to give the athletics budget a hair cut; it won’t come in the form of disbanding men’s and women’s lacrosse.

I was on staff there in the early years. With no football and the lax programs repping his vision, no chance they are in danger.

[Farfromgeneva]

Understood. Does the entire institution have an issue though beyond hard choices?

[kramerica.inc]

Furman had one of the largest recruitment classes coming in this fall with 21 players. One 4 star recruit.

What do these kids do now? Nice school. Too late to find a landing pad?

They said they would honor scholarships for the 2020-21 school year. Trouble is Furman is not anywhere nearly fully funded in lacrosse so most of those recruits likely have no athletic financial aid.

I coached at a top D3 school that was very highly regarded academically, has won a few national titles and was usually in the hunt each year, and was on the bottom half of the tuition scale. I was often shocked at Kids (and more often parents) who used to tell me “sorry coach, not interested. I want to ‘go D1.’” And then the kid ended up at a school like Furman, that didn’t value the program, saddled with more debt, playing mediocre lacrosse.

We used to tell kids- Program gets cut, coaches leave, ACLs get torn.

Pick a school for the whole picture. Don’t go somewhere just to “go D1.”

[DocBarrister]

Not to pick on them but why is High Point so stable? My understanding is they binged on debt to build a stupid over the top campus and haven’t really stayed on projections for endowment growth.

High Point markets itself as the “Premier Life Skills University,” but they are equally the “Premier Lifestyles University.”

Just look at their top-ranked student union, Slane Center:

http://www.highpoint.edu/blog/2015/01/s ... in-nation/



Plus, each HPU freshman is assigned a “Success Coach.” Seriously, what the ^#*+?!?

http://www.highpoint.edu/blog/2015/09/s ... -freshmen/



DocBarrister

[Typical Lax Dad]

I’m sure he means private.

But it’s funny how UF, FL St and Miami are major athletics schools and a university with nearly 60,000 students isn’t in a major conference. It’s almost 1.5x state capital of VT, Burlington. Heck it’s 1/3 the size of Providence.

I took. Look at schools ranked below 100....an awful lot of schools and some very good with decent endowments. I don’t see private colleges being dis-intermediated in the long run. Some weak schools? Absolutely, those have been getting absorbed over the past few years. The pace will pick up but it’s not because distance learning is redefining the market.

[Farfromgeneva]

I still think long run that small colleges need $300-$400mm to take existential solvency threats off the table. Where a school w 1,500-3,000 students can throw $15-$20mm towards operations year to year and cover non profit requirements and stay mostly positive year to year. Value proposition, declining college aged kids coming next 10-20yrs and other considerations. And kind of think we will see fewer shiftless, wealthy NE boarding school kids who float through many solid but not too 25-40 liberal arts colleges and do jack sheet afterwards bother with college going forward and just smoke weed while at semester at sea or NOLS then become real estate agents, mortgage brokers, outside sales guys etc

And yeah I’m not buying MOOC or whatever, though I do love me some Khan Academy for my kids (I really should donate more than the $90 life to date that I have to them, 2x$20 and a $50) because it’s just great for them. Or...Gates could chip in a few more hundred million of his scrilla.

(Officially ive heard scrilla used a million times but not in nearly a decade until the last episode of Billions from one of two hall of fame tv characters, Dollar Bill, and realized I missed nomenclature like that)

[Typical Lax Dad]

I still think long run that small colleges need $300-$400mm to take existential solvency threats off the table. Where a school w 1,500-3,000 students can throw $15-$20mm towards operations year to year and cover non profit requirements and stay mostly positive year to year. Value proposition, declining college aged kids coming next 10-20yrs and other considerations. And kind of think we will see fewer shiftless, wealthy NE boarding school kids who float through many solid but not too 25-40 liberal arts colleges and do jack sheet afterwards bother with college going forward and just smoke weed while at semester at sea or NOLS then become real estate agents, mortgage brokers, outside sales guys etc

And yeah I’m not buying MOOC or whatever, though I do love me some Khan Academy for my kids (I really should donate more than the $90 life to date that I have to them, 2x$20 and a $50) because it’s just great for them. Or...Gates could chip in a few more hundred million of his scrilla.

(Officially ive heard scrilla used a million times but not in nearly a decade until the last episode of Billions from one of two hall of fame tv characters, Dollar Bill, and realized I missed nomenclature like that)

https://www.collegeraptor.com/college-r ... PerStudent

[Farfromgeneva]

Played around for a minute w the sight but what am I looking for? Unit metrics are often great to utilize but there’s also floor levels nominally as well that matter too. At a minimum to cover basic infrastructure opex.

Believe me, when I think about this optic I worry very much about my alma mater, HWS, who’s lagged badly and sitting around $175-$200mm endowment (generally listed as around $215-230mm but prior to this calendar year and we did lose 3% in fiscal 2019 through May which is bizarre) and that even a place that’s solid and carrying a 200+ year history is probably at far greater risk than anyone on the board or in admin realizes by a large margin.

[Homer]

Furman has a better appeal for a southern smaller college than most of the SoCon so if they are in trouble I'd have to assume not only Jax, but Bellarmine, High Point and Mercer would be at very similar risk.

I'm not sure that's quite the right way of looking at it. To be clear: it's certainly not a *good* sign for anybody. But I do think what you'll see to some extent is a split between more and less selective institutions, where the more selective ones make cuts to athletics for fiscal stability, while others double down on athletics as a last-ditch enrollment booster.

In other words: a school that rejects tons of highly qualified applicants every year can drop a sport and immediately fill the equivalent number of admissions slots with equally-capable tuition-payers who only want to be on the Harry Potter broomball club or whatever. A school that doesn't have that luxury is actually losing tuition dollars in a very direct way for every sport they cut.

So with places like Jacksonville, I would worry about *the school closing* (or converting to some permanently-online, barely-recognizable version of itself), but until that happens would expect sports to be among the very last things shut down, right before the power company comes to turn the lights off.

[harflax]

Not to pick on them but why is High Point so stable? My understanding is they binged on debt to build a stupid over the top campus and haven’t really stayed on projections for endowment growth.

High Point has recruited several of my players. One of my player's father is a professor at American University. He and his son visited the campus and like most people was blown away with how beautiful it was. His son had keen interest in High Point but the dad was skeptical. He did research to see where and how the university was spending their money. His research included trying to email and call several officials at High Point and they refused to answer his questions.
Here is what his research on High Point revealed. The High Point faculty conducts virtually no research. The university's money goes to bricks and mortar. The faculty is not paid as well as comparable universities. He also felt the qualifications of the faculty was substandard. His conclusion is you get the show of going to a beautiful school but you may be paying a price in regard to quality of education.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Played around for a minute w the sight but what am I looking for? Unit metrics are often great to utilize but there’s also floor levels nominally as well that matter too. At a minimum to cover basic infrastructure opex.

Believe me, when I think about this optic I worry very much about my alma mater, HWS, who’s lagged badly and sitting around $175-$200mm endowment (generally listed as around $215-230mm but prior to this calendar year and we did lose 3% in fiscal 2019 through May which is bizarre) and that even a place that’s solid and carrying a 200+ year history is probably at far greater risk than anyone on the board or in admin realizes by a large margin.

I meant to add a note. Some of those schools outside of the top 100 have pretty decided endowments per student. $300k per student is a pretty good metric. There will be a shakeout though. We have some exposure to colleges/universities but we have been very selective. We did a tax exempt deal for a school that went from a $6MM endowment to close to $100MM in 6 years. $40MM dorm project. It’s was an almost bullet proof structure with cash reserves for everything. 2 years of debt service, 1 year of repair and maintenance with a COLA, 1 year of operating expenses, and several other reserves. It will be interesting to see if the school survives this ordeal. Went to the public debt markets a couple of years ago after getting a BBB rating I believe.

[Homer]

it's infuriating that they won't just proceed without scholarships, cutting expenses as much as possible, and seeing if the players/alums can make up some shortfall until hopefully the budgets can stabilize.

Infuriating as it may be, I suspect Furman may have looked at the mlax program's record at the current funding level, and fairly reasonably concluded that trying to sustain a competitive program with even less institutional support was a pointless enterprise.

[10stone5]

I don’t really see any of this as bad nor infuriating, or anything really emotionally wrenching.

I was glancing at a school, a private-public, but really people tend to look at this school as a public due to all the public grants.

20 programs in all, 20 sponsored sports, one sport they just started up in the past two years.

That’s easy pickings, as harsh as that may seem, but it isn’t as if mountains hasn’t been written about the bloat at any number of schools.

So schools have to take a good hard look at what they are offering, that’s not really all that bad.

[HooDat]

Have you polled college students and professors?

This school is going under?

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ucf-3954

I don't out much stock in "rankings". My point is that many people see a future that has a small fraction of the universities we have now. Lots of schools could go the way of the buggy whip, but of course schools that fill a wanted niche will survive. I could even envision a higher ed landscape that has some "lesser" schools acting as satellite campuses for "brand" school - you know something like the "Podunk Town Campus of Harvard".

This is all theoretical, obviously. But imho, recent events have increased the chance that it happens and/or moved forward the date on which it begins to happen.

[HooDat]

Feels as if HSs could be in trouble too. From what I understand, plenty of kid's grades going up with the current work/school from home system. Friend's son-in-law teacher says he works about an hour a day doing what he does, kids are on their own from there. Wife's a teacher too, very nice combined income. Pretty nice gig going on right now, but I'd be worried about the future.

Oh, bout damn time you resurfaced.
Welcome back.

thanks DMac - the politics thread got to be too much for me. Been sticking the lacrosse only threads lately.

To your point - my youngest is a junior in high school, and he is in the process of getting the best grades he has ever earned.

[Chuckman]

Going through a university budget will really make you question your (actually their) sanity. The number of "associate director of people with itchy left elbows" types that all make solid six-figure incomes tells you all you need to know about why the cost of higher ed has skyrocketed in comparison to other costs.....

I suspect that many universities are going to struggle to survive at all, let alone maintain athletics.

Lots of 2020 graduates thinking hard about a gap year.

Colleges were under a lot of scrutiny before, COVID and distance learning is a bright light into some of the remaining dark areas that we had been lulled into taking at face value.

Mark my words - the internet is about to do to non top-100 colleges what it did to journalism.

Have you polled college students and professors?

This school is going under?

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/ucf-3954

Where is the story about UCF going under? That would be a shock if it did?