Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Small by Design: Resilience in an Era of Mass Higher Education
The story of the small liberal arts college in the past half century also coincides with
the formation and development of the Council of Independent Colleges.
competitors in charting its course and mission. The story
of the independent college is a distinctive saga that has no
counterpart elsewhere in American higher education. Daniel
Webster and his contemporaries—college donors, presidents,
alumni, professors, and students—made an effective case for
the survival of the independent liberal arts college in the 19 th
century. But how has this institution fared in the past halfcentury,
in the transition from the post-World War II boom
into the 21 st century
The answer to that question is a story of continuous
vitality of the college in the era of mass higher education,
even as the small liberal arts college increasingly shared the
higher education stage with relatively younger and usually
larger institutional players: the state universities and the
public two-year junior and community colleges. During
the second half of the 20 th century, all of American higher
education was transformed by important public policies at
the federal and state levels.
Faced with a fluid landscape of higher education
systems, especially in the public sector, independent liberal
arts colleges have been highly effective in maintaining and
revitalizing their mission of baccalaureate education. Their
resilience has required innovation in the curriculum and
the structure of their campuses and has alerted attention
to changes in the external environment of state and federal
policies as well as in private philanthropy. The story of the
small liberal arts college in the past half century also coincides
with the formation and development of the Council of
Independent Colleges.
The Paradox of
Quantity and Quality
Reconstructing the story of independent liberal arts
colleges over the past half century is like traveling with Alice
through the looking glass. Like Alice’s trip to Wonderland, the
path is marked by puzzles—most of which eventually make
sense, but only after some thoughtful sorting and sifting.
For example, the curious situation of the
independent colleges was that they grew smaller while they
grew larger. How could it be The number of four-year
independent liberal arts colleges increased after World War
II. Most of them also increased in size by expanding their
enrollments, admitting more students between 1950 and
2005 than ever before; indeed, enrollment at independent
four-year institutions more than doubled in this period.
However, absolute growth coincided with a relative decline as
a proportion of all American institutions of higher education.
The liberal arts colleges came to represent a smaller
percentage of American institutions and undergraduate
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