Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Small by Design: Resilience in an Era of Mass Higher Education
Alumni of private colleges are more likely to give financial support to their
alma mater than are graduates of public colleges and universities.
The size and scope of varsity sports programs across
the range of small liberal arts colleges varies. Many of the
institutions are committed to offering a large number of
sports. This means that such “Olympic sports” as track and
field, cross country, swimming, water polo, field hockey,
wrestling, volleyball, gymnastics, soccer, and lacrosse
often find a home beside football and basketball. It also
means that small colleges emphasize opportunities for
active involvement, rather than sidelining most students as
passive spectators at intercollegiate games. In 2000, many
independent colleges could report that more than 25 percent
of their students played on a varsity squad, including teams
for women in compliance with the federal Title IX legislation
of 1972. The educational lessons and experiences of the
playing fields, courts, and pools have been integrated into the
complete curricular experience.
This pattern of participation in varsity sports by
students at small independent colleges reinforces a more
general finding about the benefit of their undergraduate
experience—namely, that each student at a small college is
more likely to have opportunities to be an integral member of
a student organization or group, whether it be as a swimmer
on the college team, a member of the editorial board of
the student newspaper, an officer in student government,
or a member of an honor society. And participation is a
source of satisfaction. Furthermore, the habits developed as
an undergraduate tend to continue into adult life. Alumni
activities, including donations to one’s alma mater, echo
the strong record of undergraduate participation. A good
illustration of this lifelong affiliation is the percentage of
alumni who make financial contributions to their college.
Centre College of Kentucky, for example, has often topped
the national lists with an alumni donor rate over 60 percent.
Indeed, alumni of private colleges are more likely to give
financial support to their alma mater than are graduates of
public colleges and universities. Sound education can be a
gift that keeps on giving—to the mutual gain of students,
alumni, and the college as a whole.
Adversity to Adventure
In contrast to the combination of affluence and
optimism that characterized American institutions and
the economy from the late 1950s, by 1973 colleges and
universities faced what economists called “higher education’s
new depression.” Academic institutions were confronted
by “stagflation”—an unprecedented combination of more
than a decade of high inflation and soaring energy expenses
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