Will this college survive?

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Trying to Survive

Mills College has struggled with enrollment declines, persistent budget deficits and faculty unrest. Despite a nine-figure endowment and year-after-year budget reductions, the Oakland, Calif., women’s college is just one step away from a junk bond rating by Moody’s.

In the same month faculty considered a vote of no confidence in the college’s president, another women’s college on the other side of the country announced it was shutting its doors — officials at Virginia’s Sweet Briar College, citing declining enrollment, lowering yield rates and rapidly inflating tuition discounts, said they would rather close the rural college’s doors this summer than drag the process out and spend down its sizable endowment of $85 million.

Three thousand miles away, Sweet Briar’s impending closure hovered over Mills like an ominous rain cloud, and not the kind the California college was waiting for. Some faculty members wondered, would Mills eventually suffer the same fate?

“Sweet Briar is looming over us.” said Juliana Spahr, an English professor at Mills. “People are finally waking up.”