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Over the next decade or two, the main increase in college-seeking student populations should be those who are non-white (especially Latino) and first-generation. Such students may be less aware of how things like tuition work and may well avoid private SLACs for the poor job they do advertising real tuition as opposed to the inflated pre-discount rates touted on their websites. For a first-generation student of modest backgrounds, a $30,000/year SLAC can instantly be off the application list versus an $8,000/year public university.

As for tenure, it's still present at many state run 4-year colleges and non-R1 universities, although yes it is not as prolific as it once was. Even R1s are starting to take on more multi-year contractual staff over tenure-track faculty. That said, depending on the state, such positions can be fantastic offering solid promotion opportunities that parallel the tenure rank system, funding for professional development, and even some opportunity for research. Of course, such positions don't often have "tenure," though I'd point out tenure itself isn't as permanent as it seems. Annual reviews and various administrative policy specified in faculty handbooks can allow higher ups to terminate even tenured faculty for various reasons. And, this does happen.

My best advice is to seek the best match job for your starting career and then work to cultivate solid teaching, high-quality research, and try to win external funding. If you can do much of this well, you should have a bright future in academia - tenure-track or not.

I'm actually not so sure of that. Once you know yourself and the school, you might have a very good sense of whether you'll likely get tenure there. But it's much harder to know how viable the school is in 20+ years. Maybe in 20+ years a LOT of schools will be closing. I also think that at a certain type of school that the OP might be talking about, tenure is not THAT hard to come by (except for financial reasons — i.e. the college firing TT faculty because they can't afford to tenure people), but financial exigency is common.

I've worked at two "average" liberal arts-ish schools and they both have substantial financial problems. Except for maybe 1, all of the other places where I got offers and interviews complained about finances as well. It's a real problem these days. Short of the very elite places it's uncommon to find a school that is NOT having this sort of trouble.

I don't think that online learning is really a threat in the near future and an isolated college actually has an advantage as there are no competitors near by. It is much more likely that a small college in a large city will close.

Regardless, the fact that you are offered a position mean that they have money for the foreseeable future and growing. I wouldn't be bothered by that. You will have plenty of time to find another job once you are in and see how the college is doing.

Let me add a note I share a lot here - if this is your first faculty job, don't go into it thinking it's your final one and that tenure is all that important. Once you have some experience in a tenure-stream position, so long you have strong teaching evals and have kept up some research, you can more readily move to other perhaps better positions. The hardest part of the academic career path is landing the first job. I think many academics enter their first job thinking "it's the one" and must be perfect. Reality is like any career, people can and do move around.

I'd also consider the age of the school (again obviously correlates with endowment), and the endowment relative to the age.

Do you think the offer of a "tenure-track position" to new faculty members at small rural SLACs (without extremely high endowments)
is really tenable? Is it realistic to believe that many of these schools will be around in 15-20 years with the rise of online learning,
etc.. Should junior faculty count on this tenure-track or should they be skeptical?

Thoughts?

I agree with the person who posted a few spots back on this thread. A lot of the time they say it takes 2 weeks but in my experience I always got the offer immediately after the last person interviewed. I WAS the last person on two occasions and once I didn't even make it home before they were calling. I didn't get the official letter then, but I truly believe they contact their first choice person immediately after the last interview (or rather as soon as the dept/committee meets, which is pretty fast because they want to move things along and can schedule this to happen right after that last interview in most cases.)

I think the reason most places say 2 weeks is because they want to keep you hanging on in case you are #2 (or even #3). And they do try to force a decision on the first person within this timeframe, usually.

1) Area of application (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social): Social
2) Posdoc (Yes/No): No
3) Grant funding (Yes/No): No
4) Number of publications: 6
5) Number of FA publications: 4
6) Number of A-journal publications (and how many were FA): 1? (1)
7) Number of classes taught (or TA'd): 10
8) Your current status as an applicant (grad student, postdoc, asst/assoc/full prof): ABD grad student
9) Type of job applied for (R1, R2, SLAC, CC, postdoc): mostly R2s and SLACs
10) Outcome (offer, interview, phone interview, grueling despair): Offered 1x tenure track, 1x visiting, and 1x Post-Doc (took the tenure track)

Job Cycle 2
(omitted stuff that didn't change0
3) Grant funding (Yes/No): No
4) Number of publications: 7
5) Number of FA publications: 4
6) Number of A-journal publications (and how many were FA): 1? (1)
7) Number of classes taught (or TA'd): 25+
8) Your current status as an applicant (grad student, postdoc, asst/assoc/full prof): asst prof
9) Type of job applied for (R1, R2, SLAC, CC, postdoc): R1, R2, strong SLACs
10) Outcome (offer, interview, phone interview, grueling despair): landed interviews with around 70% of places I applied for, took 1st offer which was the best position I applied for

My tip to applicants is to cast as wide a net as possible with your first academic job search, even if it means living in a very non-ideal place or working at a non-ideal institution as full time faculty. My research portfolio didn't advance tremendously between my positions, but it seems once you're in the faculty ranks and have strong student evaluations, it's a lot easier to move around (and move on up). Of course, this doesn't necessarily apply to an R1 position. For that, you're better off with a strong post-doc route as the first position.

1) Area of application (e.g., cognitive, developmental, social):
2) Posdoc (Yes/No):
3) Grant funding (Yes/No):
4) Number of publications:
5) Number of FA publications:
6) Number of A-journal publications (and how many were FA):
7) Number of classes taught (or TA'd):
8) Your current status as an applicant (grad student, postdoc, asst/assoc/full prof):
9) Type of job applied for (R1, R2, SLAC, CC, postdoc):
10) Outcome (offer, interview, phone interview, grueling despair):

Looking forward to seeing the results!