Dive Brief:
- Sweet Briar College's leadership attempted to have merger conversations with a number of institutions, including the University of Virginia, before announcing it would close this summer.
- According to communication between UVA and Sweet Briar administrators obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, the discussions didn’t get far, in part because UVA became embroiled in two crises of its own.
- That particular merger, though, would have been a tough sell, as state leaders would have needed to be convinced that absorbing financially troubled Sweet Briar was a good investment for taxpayers.
Dive Insight:
Mergers are one way to keep a college open amid financial strain. They are often complicated, organizationally, as institutions all have their own cultures and traditions. Folding a century-old private women’s college into a massive public institution like UVA would have come with very stark changes for Sweet Briar faculty, staff, and students. A handful of higher education institutions, though, have announced mergers this year, choosing to adapt to a new environment rather than close.
Mergers, of course, are most successful when the failing party acts while it still has something to offer a potential partner. Now that Sweet Briar has been forced to stay open with new leadership, major organizational changes are almost guaranteed to address the structural issues that led to its closing announcement in the first place.