Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

John R. Thelin
Independent liberal arts colleges soon benefited from a tide of support—both financial
and emotional—coming from the business sector and major foundations.
of keeping education affordable—and run the risk of
deterring large numbers of potential students from applying
for admission. Meanwhile, presidents of private colleges
understood that their institutions were at a disadvantage
compared with state universities that could ride out the
inflationary bubble on supplementary appropriations from
state governments. From New York to California, state
legislators and postsecondary education officials committed
themselves to “low tuition” or “no tuition” policies for instate
students at the public universities and junior colleges.
The private colleges had no such recourse. A small number of
the most affluent private colleges began to draw more heavily
from their endowments to subsidize each student. But
this was an option that few liberal arts colleges could even
consider, let alone implement.
For most schools, the primary response was to trim
the budget, tighten faculty and staff salaries, defer campus
maintenance and construction—literally, do more with less.
This, too, was an early glimpse of a recurring public policy
concern for private colleges over the next half century:
namely, how to reduce the “tuition gap” between themselves
and public institutions that could charge relatively less thanks
to state subsidies.
Flourishing Philanthropy
How, then, did independent colleges deal with their
financial problems The first answer is that they relied on
practices acquired during a long tradition of resourcefulness.
Starting in the 1950s they also responded with increased
attention to alumni giving and other fundraising activities.
The adversity of the post-World War II inflationary crunch
turned out to have some unexpected advantages, as the
colleges’ laudable efforts to handle rising costs were noticed
and appreciated beyond their own walls. Independent liberal
arts colleges soon benefited from a tide of support—both
financial and emotional—coming from the business sector
and major foundations.
According to historians Merle Curti and Roderick
Nash, the first step in this direction was taken by Frank
Abrams, a corporate executive of Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Around 1948 he began urging companies to make charitable
contributions to private colleges and universities. Soon
afterward, however, Abrams’ efforts stalled when Standard
Oil’s legal counsel warned that the firm’s corporate charter
forbade such contributions to higher education unless all
the stockholders approved. But this restriction disappeared
when the state of New Jersey amended its corporation law to
“empower corporations chartered in the state to contribute,
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