OT: Finlandia University in UP to Close.
Sad, sad day for the state of Michigan as Finlandia University(formerly known as Suomi College) is closing it’s doors after the fall semester.Finlandia is located in Hancock in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Attendance is way down at most of the other state universities and colleges too. Only Michigan and MSI have seen net growth in enrollments.
Small colleges are steadily going the way of the dodo.The amount of colleges is slowly shrinking after a century of massive expansion.
Sorry to hear this. College has become an arms race.. more building… tuition growth (seemingly uncontrolled).. and, no end in sight.
The state is lucky to have two public schools as reputable as they are. Well, one for sure..
I'm assuming your statement here is tongue and cheek, but the state of Michigan absolutely is lucky to have MSU in addition to U of M.
Michigan's undergrad is made up of ~50% out of state students, MSU's is about 22% and MSU in general serves many more Michigander undergraduates than does U of M.
I thought he meant Wayne State.
Stevie, I’m someone supporting that “out of state” model for Michigan.
And, as much as I may enjoy chiding that institution in East Lansing, they are a good institution of higher learning. I use the AAU as a barometer, and - MSU is a member school of that body.
As others pointed out - there are many other fine schools in the state - Wayne State, Oakland, WMU, CMU, etc…
I will admit to my support of the Maize & Blue, seven days a week.. as both a parent and alum.
Go Blue!
To be clear, i'm not really questioning whether the 'out of state' model is good or bad. My point was only that if we're talking about 'what's good for Michigan', MSU is *definitely* good for the state as they provide a good quality of education to a ton of Michigan residents.
I'm living out in Colorado and if MSU were here they would be the best school in the state (I guess with the exception of the Air Force Academy but that school is not designed to serve the local population).
This is just plain silly.
The best school in Colorado is the Colorado School of Mines. Undergrad admits to Mines have an average GPA of 3.8 and 1350-1490 to get in.
MSU is 1100-1320 and MSU's acceptance rate is 71%.
If you want to fawn all over Staee, fine. But to act like they are one of the top institutions in the nation is silly. Especially when MSU's core curriculum lacks rigor.
I only glanced at school of mines academic ranking, so fair point there, but it's a school with a total enrollment of 7000. It's not designed to be a top quality general studies University for the masses like UC-Boulder or MSU. School of Mines admits less than 1k Colorado freshmen per year.
"Especially when MSU's core curriculum lacks rigor." Compared to whom? U of M? Sure. It's pretty dumb to say "X school is shit" just because there is someone better. MSU does a solid job educating Michigan-based undergrads which is the general point.
I never understood the constant need to denigrate where others were educated.
My dogs certainly appreciate their Veterinary school.
I enjoy jokingly dunking on MSU academics as much as anyone because I've got a lot of friends that went to State, but I totally agree. It's a great education. I'm in Illinois, and as I think about my elementary age kids and what their future might hold, I wish we had a #2 public school as good as Michigan State. Of course, I also wish we had a #1 as good as Michigan.
I think the comparison of where students come from does miss a more important component, though: where they end up. Plenty of Michigan students who come from out of state will leave when they're done, but those who stay are a big win for the state. A great student who stays likely wouldn't have ended up in the state Michigan if not for U of M, so that's a huge benefit the university provides the state. Whereas a student who grows up in state and stays in state would have had decent odds of a similar trajectory even if Michigan or Michigan State were not as good as they are.
Dunking on MSU academics is regularly one of the lamer activities some Michigan fans like to pick up. It's a pretty solid public university.
When the general student population can get a 4 year degree at MSU without having to take a math course such as algebra, it's valid to dunk on MSU's academics.
Is that Stanford Harbaugh I hear?
According to US News, the "national" ranking for MSU is 77 - our of over 400 National Universities. I'll admit to "poking" at certain academic aspects of MSU. I have many good friends who are Spartan alumni.
In terms of the USN&WR ranking - MSU is between Indiana and Iowa And, shares the 77th ranking with fellow B1G school - Penn State. Nebraska brings up the "rear" - ranked 151st. So, based on that ranking - MSU is in the bottom quartile.
MSU is an AAU member - which I noted in another comment - and, all B1G schools with the exception of Nebraska are AAU members. The AAU is a characteristic which I value. There's a lot of research that takes place - and, much of that is beneficial for both students and society.
The market for college is hyper saturated and has been for decades. There's simply not enough students going to college to support so many schools. Expect many of the lower tier small private schools to close in the near to medium future.
Frankly, this can be construed as a good thing. Most of these tiny schools that no one's heard of don't actually provide the same level of education and connections as larger schools and are basically just a scam. Finlandia's graduation rate is TWENTY SEVEN PERCENT. That means that three quarters of the students attend the school, pay money (and take out loans), then do not receive a degree. Functionally, they take on debt and receiving literally nothing in exchange for their money other than the shame of being labeled a college drop out.
And yet every Tier 1 school is getting insane amounts of applications, driving acceptance rates radically down over the last 5 years.
That's due to the Common Application. It's a lot easier to apply to a bunch of schools now.
It's due more to schools not requiring SAT / ACT scores anymore than the common app, which has been around for a while.
Your SAT / ACT scores used to "tell on you" that you were not at the academic level you need to be for the top schools. It was a deterrent to applying to many schools.
But that deterrent is no more. And with grade inflation, a lot of kids with artificially high grades and no SAT / ACT scores to say otherwise are saying "What the hell, I might as well submit an application to MIT and Stanford, maybe they'll like something quirky in my background."
All this throwing applications against the wall and seeing what sticks results in very high rejection rates from the top schools. Kids see this and what do they do? They submit even more applications to top schools to hedge their bets.
This insane level of rejections by top schools - 80%, 90%, even more - is unwise and not sustainable. Every top school receives a lot of government (i.e. taxpayer) money for various purposes. Those taxpayers are becoming angry and resentful. They not going to keep funding institutions that gratuitously reject 90% of their applicants.
While you make some good points, I don't quite understand your concluding one. With a finite number of spaces for a year's students, how is it gratuitous to not accept more students than that number?
It is gratuitous to not accept 10 times more students than you admit, while enticing them to apply by deliberately obfuscating your acceptance criteria . . . "We look at the student holistically".
That's bullshit. I know a number of college admissions people and they know what they are looking for, and they could easily communicate it to the level where students that don't have a chance know that up front before they apply.
But they don't do that because they like the "selectivity" metrics that rejecting 90% of their applicants produces, and they make a good chunk of change on the extra application fees.
Don't forget to add the fact that schools are gaming the national college ratings such as the famous US News and World Report college ratings. One of their top factors they use to rate colleges is acceptance rate. Elite universities have discovered that the more they encourage "no-chance" applicants to apply, the better their rating.
Yale (just to pick on one particular institution) makes it cheaper to apply, they stop requiring test scores, and send out recruiters to encourage as many kids as will fall for it to apply to their university. Boom--they move up in the USNWR rating without incurring any expense on their end.
There are all sorts of tricks now for how schools are gaming the USNWR rankings because the algorithm has been more or less cracked. They pull all sorts of operational stuff that seems innocuous on the surface until some dean lets it slip about what exactly they're doing. It's a crap metric that means nothing, but undergrad programs are biting on it hook, line, and sinker even more than ever even as the professional schools (law, med, etc.) are pulling themselves out.
EMU’s is at 39% last I checked. CMU and WMU aren’t much better.
I fully expect the higher institution field to be drastically different in 20 years time. A lot less professorial/teaching jobs.
Maybe. If current trends continue I predict a one instructor for every forty students and one Associate Dean for every instructor. Most of the instructors will either be graduate assistants or adjuncts working on a part-time basis.
We are going to have to start primarily ranking colleges based on ROI. At these tuition rates, this much student debt, unnecessary campus expansion, bloated administrations and a plethora of junk degrees, this has to be long overdue. There are a ton of highly ranked colleges that have atrocious ROIs. Seperate the men from the boys, women from the girls, and make it an ROI race to the top, a decent step towards a meritocracy is long overdue.
College is absolutely going to have to dramatically change. Maybe we can transform closed small schools into desperately needed housing, or transform them into specific tech schools. We simply are not headed into a world that needs more administrators in any capacity.
ROI sure, but one has to ask: if there is a return that isn't strictly financial, will it be quantified?
There are a shit-ton of low compensation jobs relative to cost to enter that are absolutely essential and that we really want/need good people in (teaching, law enforcement, agriculture, fire fighters, paramedics, general medical practice, truckers...). If we learned anything during the pandemic is that there are a lot of essential roles that are taken for granted.
Those majors/jobs (teachers, nurses, social workers, police officers, etc.) should be the sole purview of state institutions. Those majors have zero business being offered at any private institution.
There are a boatload of problems with higher education. One of the most unheralded is asking 17 and 18 year olds to make these huge decisions with potentially catastrophic financial implications. Taking some of these necessary, but lower paying majors out of the purview of private schools is a good start.
So true.
“Asking 17 and 18 year olds to make these huge decisions with potentially catastrophic financial implications.” We do not teach financial literacy in high school and yet happily loan tens or hundreds of thousands to young people who have no idea of the potential ramifications of their actions. And the colleges who happily take the money grant degrees for which…a) there are few jobs or b) the available jobs do not pay enough to pay back the loans or c) require reenlistment for a graduate or professional degree with additional piles of debt. The colleges know this yet take the money anyway.
"The colleges know this yet take the money anyway."
Are they not supposed to? Higher education is a business like any other. A lot of these schools have no choice--they either take that money or close.
"We do not teach financial literacy in high school . . . "
We can teach all the financial literacy in the world to high school students, but the vast majority of them aren't equipped to make an ROI decision on their college education.
Sure, you can quantify a return that isn't strictly financial . . . . but if you are going to send someone into lifelong debt so you can teach them basket weaving, that should probably be illegal.
You can't charge tuition at these rates and offer junk degrees. It is literally gross negligent misconduct by the Universities.
Totally agree. But I think an unacknowledged cause of all this is the huge decrease in public education investment. None of these overpriced degrees, bullshit certificate programs, and executive masters degrees existed until State governments tightened the purse strings and forced public universities to become entrepreneurial and prioritize revenue over outcomes.
Are people who transfer out counted in that graduation rate statistic? Finlandia used to only be a 2-year college and even now I think it’s common for students to transfer after two years.
many start, not many Finnish.
so suo mi
But... it adds to the collapse of academia. Colleges closing means existing and future jobs lost, and at a time when even Tier 1 universities are getting penny-pinched by admins to not hire full-time/permanent faculty. Your college closes, it's not like there's a lot of options to go to when most newly-minted PhDs can't even find work.
I know it's en vogue to crap on academics, but a lot more folks who spent a lot of time building their careers are going to go have to find something else now, and that's insanely difficult.
I mean, welcome to the real world professor?
It sucks. At this rate we'll reach a point where there's a single full professor in UM's English department and a bunch of adjuncts making $500 a course. But, there will be an army of associate VPs of something or other with no research / teaching responsibilities.
I live here, and this is a big loss for our area. I have a friend in the nursing program there. She and her husband have 3 kids, so it's not realistic for the family to move to new city to finish out her degree. Additionally, local kids had the Hancock Promise Scholarship that offered $2,500/year tuition at Finlandia for grads of Hancock High School. Plus, there's incredible pride in the Finnish heritage here, and Finlandia played a big part in preserving that culture. I know for most here it's just another random small school closing that had no reason for existing, but for our tiny part of the world it's a very big deal. Thankfully, we still have MTU here to drive the local economy and provide cultural opportunities, but Finlandia is still a big loss.
From what I hear, there was a plan to get out from under a huge debt load, but this year was going to be the toughest. Then a few large donors backed out, and there was no viable path forward anymore.
Also, minor point of correction to OP: Michigan Tech was the only other Michigan school that grew over the last decade (by only a few students, but still).
That stinks for your friend. My wife is a grad of MTU (not a snow cow) and that connection brings us back to that area every few years. We love it, but I can understand why they would have such a hard time bringing in new students.
Thanks for the correction. The ethnic component is something I feel is way more important than people realize.
I think for white people remembering your roots is especially important as it challenges the concept of a monolithic “white” culture. To deconstruct white supremacy first requires deconstructing whiteness.
The loss of a Finlandia bums me out because it is the loss of university that was ethnically distinctive from the larger Anglo-founded universities.
Great school, shitty vodka
Vodka is, by definition, colorless, odorless, and tasteless.
"By definition"??? Vodka is *defined* by its lack of odor?
Not quite, but a neutral spirit diluted with water is the boneless skinless chicken breast of the spirit world.
By law, yes. But exiting through the mouth and nasal passages because you can’t taste or smell it is a different thing.
You’re bad at vodka and you should feel bad!
Stoli for the win (if you're a winter wheat fan).
They made the worst vodka so no big deal.
Finlandia's backstory is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandia_University
Stepping back to the larger issue, with each passing year the number of reasonable school-major combos (if you're at all concerned with ROI, which is -- or should be -- the case for most families) shrinks.
The college's role was to preserve Finnish culture, train Lutheran ministers and teach English
It most likely succeeded in its mission for its first hundred years. But that is not a viable mission for a college in the current world. It is a college that no longer has a rationale to keep existing, other than it has been around for a long time.