Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

John R. Thelin
In American higher education, imitation is a form
of flattery. Presidents of the great state universities have
repeatedly looked to small private colleges as models to
reform undergraduate education in the public “knowledge
factories.” Their innovations tacitly acknowledge that
the liberal arts campus remains an admirable setting for
undergraduate education. Clark Kerr, legendary president
of the multi-campus University of California system, who
often invoked favorably his own undergraduate experience
at Swarthmore College, had great hopes in 1965 for the
newly opened campus of the University of California at Santa
Cruz to create diversity within the large state university.
Kerr and his colleagues sought a new structure that would
allow the “university to seem smaller as it grew larger.” Even
though the University of California, University of Michigan,
and other large state institutions struggled to rediscover
the appeal of small size for undergraduate education, few
of these initiatives to humanize the scale of undergraduate
education—such as creating experimental colleges or cluster
colleges in the state universities—took root. Only a dozen
public, genuinely liberal arts colleges exist today, although a
new wave of imitation can be seen in the recent establishment
of honors colleges within large universities. Meanwhile,
independent colleges continued to refine their vision of small
campuses with vital communities and rich curricula.
A Carnegie
Corporation
study, Struggle
and Promise: A
Future for the
Colleges (1969),
commended
institutions such
as Berea College
for their intensive
self-studies and
institutional
adaptations.
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