RZehr wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 1:55 amLook at how many students they started with, and how many they have now.
I have no idea how many they started with or have now. But continually dropping tuition and attempting to go tuition free isn't a good sign. If the school was an attractive and competitive package they wouldn't have to do that. Essentially Finny is just paying for the college educations of a bunch of middle class kids. Doesn't seem like a particularly useful thing to do. If the place just vanished or had never existed, how many of those students still would have managed to get their own educations the normal way by working, borrowing and with the help of family? Most I would guess. The fact of the matter is that college education is an expensive proposition. Someone always has to pick up the tab. Either the government (loans, grants, public schools) private wealth (private schools with endowments) or family. There is no free lunch.
RZehr wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 1:55 amI think it is not uncommon for a startup company to have some top people split fairly early on. Especially if the company is not about profit, but about vision and direction. Money will hold people together if that is what their motive is, like a startup company. But a startup nonprofit seems like the vision plays a bigger role. Sattler is similar to a business in that it has a clear boss and owner. This is a big difference between it, and your run of the mill non-profits, I think.
Well, OK. But this isn't a startup company. If they are going to be sustainable they need to broaden their funding base. Seems like it is actually narrowing. Church schools traditionally do that by being attached to a substantial denomination that can support the project through thick and thin in form of both students and contributions. That isn't the case here.
RZehr wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 8:40 pmConsidering how it started with one church, and I sometimes hear of other FOTW-esque groups popping up? Yes, I’d say they are having/had some success. To be clear, I don’t keep up with it closely at all. Just hear things once in a while.
It’s Charity all over again, (as far as I’m concerned). Mennonites of different stripes, who are not happy with their current churches, starting franchises cut from the FOTW cloth.
Complete with the disclaimers that “we aren’t really FOTW, but yes, we fellowship back and forth with them, and really appreciate them”, and wearing distinctive cloth coverings. And conservative Mennonites resisting the real and perceived “sheep stealing”.
I actually wish them the best, but to me it is all so very familiar.
In short, yes, I think it is working forth them.
Personally I think they have the whole equation backwards. You grow the church until it reaches the point that it can support institutions like a college. Not the other way around. In any event, is it the college that is contributing to that growth? Or is it peripheral to it?
I'm obviously not invested one way or the other. Some here seem eager to see the place fail. I'm just a casual observer with some personal knowledge of the whole college business as I have sent three daughters to college (well, number 3 starts college this fall) so over the course of that experience I have actually visited dozens and dozens of colleges and researched many more. Public, private, small, larger, religious, non-religious. And I have also advised many students in choosing and applying for college over the years as well. So I have a decent sense of what the overall marketplace is like. And yes, it is a marketplace. What colleges are thriving, what colleges are struggling. And I have sense as to why.
I'll be surprised if this place around in 25 years. At least in its present form. Because I don't see how they get from here to a self-sustaining institution. I just don't get it I guess.
This was their application to the MA Board of Higher Education back in 2016.
https://www.mass.edu/bhe/lib/documents/ ... %20AAC.pdf
Within 10 years there were projecting to have their own campus, have expanded to at least 20 faculty, and add new seven new majors in Civil Engineering, English, Education, Journalism, Mathematics, Physics, and Social Sciences. That is 2 years away. I wonder how close they are to achieving that objective. That is also kind of an odd mix.