Rethinking the Role of Small Colleges in their Communities

Robert L. Fried and Eli O. Kramer argue in "Privileged Enclave or Village Commons? A Choice for Liberal Arts Colleges" at Inside Higher Ed on January 21, 2021 that "Nonelite small colleges face a pivotal choice: they can try to persevere by emulating elite Ivies, hoping to outlast the multiple threats they face; or they can remain true to their historic mission and high academic standards while extending the best traditions of liberal education to young people from surrounding community high schools, many of whose students now view their local college as “not a place for people like me.”

Or, as former Hampshire College president Gregory Prince notes, “The real task...is to get a lot more students to believe they have the potential to be successful, motivated learners, rather than to seek the few within diverse populations who have already bought into that vision."

Fried and Kramer conclude by noting that our "...democratic way of life, our embrace of the universal rights of human beings and the survival of our planet cannot remain the exclusive province of a highly educated and culturally sequestered gentility if we are to withstand the onslaught of populist, authoritarian ideologues and their exploitation of working-class and poor people. We must counter with a democratic way of living that is itself populist in its embrace of universal human aspirations for dignity, respect and inclusion amid an evolving global economy and a social media explosion."

The authors are affiliated with The New American Baccalaureate Project. You can visit the group's website for links to blog posts, podcasts, and other resources related to their Village Commons Initiative.

Nichols College is Featured for Steps Taken to Thrive in Competitive Environment

WGBH in Boston recently posted a five-minute segment produced in cooperation with The Hechinger Report, "As Small Private Colleges Keep Closing, Some Are Fighting Back," featuring interviews with students and faculty of Nichols College in Dudley, MA.

The text of the post offers additional information including specific recommendations offered by Nichols president, Susan Engelkemeyer.

You can also access a post on The Hechinger Report website, "As small private colleges keep closing, some are fighting back. The first step to a survival strategy: acknowledging that there’s a problem."

Nichols traced its roots to Nichols Academy founded in 1815. It closed in 1909 and later was reorganized as Nichols Junior College in 1931. The name changed to Nichols College of Business Administration in 1958 and then to Nichols College in 1971.

Successful Small Higher Education Institutions Featured in Future U Podcasts

Future U, Jeff Selingo's and Michael Horn's podcast, offers several interesting episodes for those who follow smaller institutions: #11 features Paul Quinn College president Michael Sorrell; #17 is an interview with Pat McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University; and they feature Helen Drinan, president of Simmons University in episode #28. 

Why Vermont Colleges are Closing...a VTDigger Podcast

The VTDigger website posted a link to the podcast, "The Deeper Dig: Why Vermont colleges keep closing," on March 8, 2019.  This segment of a weekly podcast is hosted by Mike Dougherty and Lola Duffort who previously reported on the recent announcements that Green Mountain College and Southern Vermont College will be closing.  Dougherty and Duffort speak with Tom Greene,  president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a former commissioner at the New England Commission of Higher Education.

The podcast is 18 minutes in length and a link to a full transcript is also provided. 

Vermont College President Offers Key Observations and Optimism

Important comments by president Matthew Derr of Sterling College in Craftsbury, VT were published by the Rutland (VT) Herald on February 2, 2019, "Vermont by Degrees: Optimism for our Future."

Derr begins by noting some recent higher education news items and cautions that a number of Vermont's institutions like Sterling College are actually thriving. He further argues that institutions with modest resources, "... can navigate tough times when leadership is stable and the board’s relationship with the president is healthy. Such a relationship is not simply about accommodating the president’s ideas, but rather it requires a balance of shared responsibility for the institution’s well-being."

Derr offers two key observations of struggling institutions.  They tend to have quite a bit of turnover for presidents and there is usually a tendency to see information sharing as a threat. 

Instead, Derr argues that recruitment of institutional leaders and continuity of the leadership over time are critical to insure that there is a good fit for leaders with the mission and institutional culture.  He then notes that engagement between a college’s stakeholders needs to be based on trust and that good communication and transparency is critical.

You can visit the Sterling College website to learn more about the programs offered and their relatively unique mission as a work college.

Sterling College has also been featured in several posts on the Small College Garden blog:

• Saturday, September 8, 2018 The Wendell Berry Farming Programs Enrolling Students Again with details of partnership of the Wendell Berry Farming Program in Kentucky and Sterling College
• Wednesday, September 13, 2017 Focus on Work Colleges: Lower Levels of Student Borrowing and Debt
• Sunday, August 28, 2016 A Call for more UltraSmall Colleges
• Thursday, August 25, 2016 Spotlight on Sterling College as a model Work College

President Derr was inaugurated as the 11th president of Sterling College in 2012.  He previously served Antioch College in Ohio.

Reporting Explores Struggles Facing Vermont's Higher Education System

The Boston Globe published a good article, "Higher education struggles are hitting Vermont hard," on January 31, 2019 with reporting by Laura Krantz.  

Krantz interviewed a number of higher education professionals from both the non-profit and public sectors to present an excellent, if sobering, overview of what various institutions in the state are facing.  

A lot of emphasis is placed on the nature of Vermont's system of higher education that was largely built in the 19th century and includes a relatively large number of institutions.  Krantz also describes in some detail how other states may yet face Vermont's problem with declining numbers of traditional students due to basic demographic issues arising from a low fertility rates.

Antioch@175 Presents a Vision for a New Kind of College

The Antioch College Board of Trustees adopted Antioch@175: A New Kind of College as it leads the institution and its supporters toward the 175th anniversary of the college founding in 2025.

Representatives of various stakeholders participated in a two year process known as FACT, or the Framework for Antioch College's Transition, a collaborative process to create a vision for the future.

Antioch is working to become a new kind of college based on three key principles.  It will focus on learning by doing as a Laboratory College.  It will emphasize connections as a Collaborative College and build off its small size and traditions to serve as a Democracy Laboratory.

Several earlier Small College Garden posts featuring Antioch College may also be of interest:

• Wednesday, April 19, 2017 Possible Lessons from Revival of Antioch College for St. Joseph's and other Small Colleges
• Tuesday, October 3, 2017 Antioch College: Perspectives on Closure and Reopening

John B. King Urges Support for HBCUs

The Baltimore Sun published an op-ed, "HBCUs contribute to our nation's prosperity--past and future."  John B. King Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama administration and president and CEO of The Education Trust.  The opinion piece was published February 25, 2018.

King shares a number of examples of HBCU and their service to the nation.    He then concludes, "The work before us to support black students’ success is about giving our children the freedom to choose to become whatever they dream they can be. In doing this work, we can be confident that we are building upon a legacy of past achievements led by many of our nation’s HBCUs and their graduates."

Future of Higher Ed: VOA features Three Leaders

Voice of America's Learning English published an interesting audio segment and transcript "Experts Debate Financial Future of American Higher Education," on February 24, 2018.  Pete Musto and Dorothy Gundy conducted interviews with Teresa Tomlinson, board chair of Sweet Briar College, Valerie Calderon, senior researcher with Gallup, and Richard Ekman, president for the Council of Independent Colleges.

Tomlinson described accomplishments over recent years as Sweet Briar has reduced expenses and paid off debt.  Calderon summarizes results of a recent Gallup survey of chief business officers from 400 institutions of higher education.  Through CIC, Eckman works with 650 independent colleges and he reports that they have been successfully adapting to meet changing needs of students and society.  He notes that, "…recent media reports of a higher education crisis are untrue. He adds that, historically, few colleges have closed permanently. Schools that come close to closing are often bought by or combined with other similar or larger schools."

The VOA post is also accompanied by a short 4-question survey to assess key points in the article.

College for Creative Studies is Featured

Linkedin posted an interesting article by Jeff Selingo on February 10, 2018, "The pipeline from school to career is broken. An idea from Detroit might be one way to fix it."  Selingo focuses on Detroit's College for Creative Studies and their co-location in the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Design Education with the Henry Ford Academy and Shinola, a firm specializing in watchmaking and leather-goods.

Selingo visited the site to interview students, along with representatives and the college and Shinola.  He concludes, "The experiment in Detroit also offers a potential solution to the “skills gap” that the U.S. and many other countries are facing as employers complain they can’t find workers with the right set of skills. With a company and a college located in the same building, college officials can quickly discover how to build on their strengths and alter programs to produce graduates with skills that better meet the needs of the workforce."

The College for Creative Studies traces its roots to the founding of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts in 1906.  A four-year art program began in 1926 and what was know as the Art School became the College of Art and Design in 1962.  The name was changed to the Center for Creative Studies-College of Art and Design in 1975 and the current name was adopted in 2001.

The college began redevelopment of the760,000 sq. ft. historic Argonaut Building, formerly General Motors’ firstresearch and design studio, in 2008.  Now known as the Taubman Center, it is located in Detroit’s New Center district.  The center is home to the college’s six undergraduate design departments, graduate degree programs in color and materials design, integrated design, interaction design and transportation design.  The Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies is an art and design charter school for middle and high school students. 

Possible Lessons from Revival of Antioch College for St. Joseph's and other Small Colleges

The Lafayette, Indiana Journal & Courier and the USA Today Network of papers published "The fall and rise of a college," with excellent reporting by Meghan Holden on April 14, 2017.  

Holden sets the stage by initially describing the emotional events surrounding recent news that St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana is closing.  She then shifts her focus to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH and weaves together interviews with students, alumni, administrators, and community members to identify lessons that might be helpful to the those trying to revive St. Joseph's.  

Three central themes emerge from her discussions with different Antioch constituents:

• emotional and financial support of alumni and the broader community are critical.
• the effort will take more time and money than anyone can envision.
• and, reliance on traditional funding models will not be successful over the long term.  

This initial article is also accompanied by a companion article, "The Antioch College experience," where Holden provides more information on Antioch's history and the evolution of its relatively unique mission and campus culture.

Small Town Colleges offer Perspective when Considering the Future of Higher Ed

Joshua Kim's offers several reasons for serving at a small college in a smaller town in his interesting post, "Small Town College Life and the Future of Higher Ed."  His article was posted on October 31, 2016 by Inside Higher Ed.

Kim initially writes that small colleges force diverse collaborations.  He follows by noting that a rural academic life requires cross-institutional collaborations and then concludes with reflections on liberal arts colleges and the future of higher education.

A couple of questions close out the post.  Kim's last question is probably the easiest for me to answer.  I have fallen in love with small town college life and just concluded a satisfying career in higher education that spanned both public and private liberal arts colleges in small towns.   I have also seen many colleagues who discovered opportunities where they can have an impact through their service, experiences where personal and professional rewards derive from active participation in life on campus or in the broader community.

I have, however, developed a more nuanced view of the last question.  While I have answered affirmatively and have even argued enthusiastically that small college towns are the best places to think big thoughts about the future of higher education,  I would now argue that small college towns are one place to think big thoughts...just not the only places.  

Small institutions in larger urban settings also offer fascinating opportunities where individuals can successfully collaborate to address challenges facing higher education or the broader society.  The College of St. Mary in Omaha is one example of a small institution in an urban area that identified a serious need then set out creatively and collaboratively to make a difference...faculty and staff  serving single mothers will serve as a model for many other institutions.

Paul Quinn College in Dallas is another example of a small institution creatively serving students and the urban neighborhoods that surround the campus.  And, there are many other examples of faculty and staff thinking big thoughts at small colleges in urban settings.