Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Small by Design: Resilience in an Era of Mass Higher Education
Small private liberal arts colleges not only survived but thrived on their ability to
Just before World War II, the flagship state universities of
Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, and Virginia enrolled
fewer than 6,000 students each. By 2000 most of these
institutions had enrollments of more than 20,000 on the
main campus, with thousands of additional students at
their new branch campuses. The University of Minnesota
alone grew from barely 1,700 students to more than 60,000
students at its main Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses in
less than a century.
Such a quantitative change in higher education
required a shift in educational philosophy. In 1949,
Life magazine featured an article about the University
of California. The president and dean stated that it was
preferable to have 500 students in a lecture hall taught by
the most notable scholar in the nation than to have smaller
classes taught by scholars of lesser stature. Bear in mind,
however, that their statement was a belief, not a research
finding. Here was the philosophical difference that set small
private colleges apart from the multiversity: college leaders
believed that small class size, a small student body, and the
close interactions of campus life were important parts of
a sound undergraduate education. That commitment was
crucial in shaping what the small independent colleges
would—and would not—do in the late-20 th century.
Although the commitment to smallness also began as a belief,
we shall see that it has stood the test of rigorous empirical
scrutiny by social and behavioral science researchers over the
decades since.
The convictions about sound undergraduate
pedagogy held at the small colleges meant, for starters, that
they could not accommodate a large share of the longterm,
nationwide growth in college attendance. In 1950,
undergraduate enrollments in the United States were almost
evenly divided between institutions in the private and public
sectors. By 1980 the public sector—including state colleges
and universities as well as community colleges—enrolled
about 79 percent of all undergraduates. This proportion has
persisted into the 21 st century.
One could infer from the data that the independent
sector has declined in appeal and that students have
shifted overwhelmingly to public institutions. Historical
context suggests a different, more nuanced explanation
for this statistical summary. Over the past five decades,
enrollments in private institutions—a group that includes
almost all small colleges—have shown healthy gains,
doubling between 1950 and 1980. By 2001 independent
colleges and universities enrolled more than three million
students—about 23 percent of the national total for all
degree-seeking students. Many small colleges, however,
deliberately chose to remain relatively small for sound
6