The Small College Advantage

Throughout the course of my career, I have had the unique opportunity to see the full range of higher education offerings. I am a graduate of and worked for a large, flagship state university (Binghamton University), I've worked for a mid-sized Jesuit University (Fairfield University), I've worked for a highly selective private university (Brandeis University), a community college (Quinsigamond Community College), and now a small, private college in my current position at Dean College. The most important lesson I have learned about American higher education through these experiences is that our system of higher education affords students maximum choice to identify the environment that is best suited to their learning needs, and that there is plenty of capacity to serve very different students.

I have also observed that, when the economy suffers, the greatest strength of our system of higher education comes under intense scruiteny. It is too expensive, many will argue, even though all the data points to the fact that net cost has remained fairly constant at private colleges and universities over the last 10 years.  We should be focusing more on-line because it is cheaper, others will say.  However, this argument ignores the fundamental flaws in on-line education, not the least of which is that the majority of high school graduates are not equipped to handle the structure of on-line education.  Finally, and the one that I find most egregious, is the belief (when the economy is weak) that students should opt for more vocational education or pre-professional programs over the liberal arts.  This, in spite of the fact that most leaders in business and industry have come out of the liberal arts tradition.

The group that is most rigorously scrutinized are the small, private colleges.  I understand the argument well.  In my younger days as a newly minted graduate of a public university, I would have been leading the charge.  Why?  Because my perspective then was limited by my own experience.  I hadn’t had the opportunity to see what else higher education had to offer.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved my undergraduate experience, and it was the right one for me.  But what experience teaches is that what is the best for one person is certainly not the best for another.  The reality is that many high school graduates will get lost at a large, public university.  They need the close attention and one-on-one contact that only a small, private college can provide.  This article does a great job of illustrating this point:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-randall/small-colleges_b_2042838.html

The small, liberal arts college is a key cornerstone to our higher education system, a system that is the envy of many in the world – no wonder that far more students flock to the United States to study than leave.  To discount the value of small private colleges for the many students who would benefit most from them is to ignore that which has helped make our nation great.