<p>I was a student there 35 years ago, so I don't know the current student population. What Antioch was good at then was bringing out the best in its students. Most of the kids I knew then went on for advanced degrees. Everyone I knew who wanted to go to med school was accepted. Maybe it's different now, but I still think wealthy people could buy more luxurious college destinations for their kids than Antioch.</p>
<p>Well, I guess the wealthy parents agreed. Not enough students to continue.</p>
<p>In my household it would be the students that had to agree, moreso than the (soon to be un-) wealthy parents. Within reason.</p>
<p>Just speculating but if </p>
<p>a)the "conservatizing of America" starting in the mid- 70s drastically reduced the appeal of its theme to the then-declining applicant pool;</p>
<p>b) While at the same time interest rates, oil embargo,inflation & over-extension caused costs to balloon, decimating endowment; (Note this would not have been such a problem if the applicants/matriculants were still beating down the doors, so a) is the problem more than b) IMO)</p>
<p>c) Therefore no money to maintain campus; perhaps cuts in programs, etc.</p>
<p>d) Then as a result the college starts looking unacceptable even to the people who LIKE the theme, </p>
<p>Hence the death spiral?</p>
<p>I guess post #25 already said this; sorry.</p>
<p>From a Time article published in 1957, comparing Ohio's 6 colleges (Kenyon, Oberlin, Denison, Wooster, Antioch and OWU):</p>
<p>"A Little Unnerving." Of the six lively colleges, the liveliest is Antioch (no church affiliation), the able, articulate rebel against academic convention. "This is the most exciting campus in America," boasts President Samuel Gould. "We can actually try out ideas in education. If they fall flat, there's no one to claw you to bits."</p>
<p>The American college student, argues Gould, "doesn't do half of what he could be doing, and not much can be done about it if everyone marches by squads." To make sure each of his students marches alone, Gould this fall is starting a free elective system so complex that it will require the beginning student to take some six hours of indoctrination lectures. This program dovetails with Antioch's famous "study-plus-work" plan, which alternates classroom work on the campus with full-time off-campus jobs aimed at helping the student's "personal development, his general education and his vocational training." One loyal employer of Antioch students: the Columbus Citizen. "It's a little unnerving," notes one staffer. "When the Antioch kids aren't sharpening their pencils or going after coffee, they're sitting in the corner reading Plato's Dialogues."</p>
<p>Very sad news. Antioch was a great school. But it serves as a reminder that colleges are businesses, and must stay financially solvent. Again, sad news.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>...boasts President Samuel Gould. "We can actually try out ideas in education. If they fall flat, there's no one to claw you to bits."<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Well, given their eventual outcome, it looks like they tried out one idea too many that fell flat, and they are getting clawed to bits.</p>
<p>I was a freshman at Antioch in Sept.1967. I soon realized it wasn't a good fit for me--academics definitely took a back seat to social and political activism at that time. But there were a lot of bright, idealistic, not just druggy-hippy kids there and a lot of interesting people on the faculty. I am sorry it is closing. (I dropped out after 8 weeks and reapplied as a freshman the following year --ending up at Mount Holyoke--that suited me better.)</p>
<p>A few of the posters summarized well what went wrong, such as bethievt. This is a school that was known up until the late 60s as a school of academic excellence with social awareness. To quote from one alum:</p>
<p>
[quote]
To cite but a few examples Antioch routinely showed up among the top ten schools in the country in a survey conducted by the American Chemical Society (ACS) based on the number (not percentage) of students who went on to graduate school. Two students were among first recipients of National Science Foundation graduate fellowships; this was out of a total of 126 awarded for all science majors in the entire US. By 1985 Antiochs chemistry department was no longer accredited by the ACS. Academic excellence was not restricted to chemistry. The conductor/composer David Epstein and the science historian Everett Mendelson of Harvard were fellow classmates. Recall too that Stephen Jay Gould who graduated in 1962 got his start at Antioch. The school seems to have lost its way sometime along the 1970s coincident with nationwide student unrest. Academic excellence seemed to have been left behind just about that time.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This is from a Chronicle blog: <a href="http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2483%5B/url%5D">http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2483</a></p>
<p>Yeah, this is what hurts. It was like no other place anywhere, I think. Not that other schools didn't have a social conscience or have internships. It was just that Antioch was all about that. It was so inter-woven into our hearts and lives. It was all about winning some victory for humanity. If anyone out there thinks it's all about making more money in investment banking, be my guest. It's a free world, but what we cared about was something else and if it sunk the school, I'd rather be sunk with Antioch than flying high with someone else.</p>
<p>bethievt -</p>
<p>I know this hurts a lot and that watching Antioch deteriorate over the years must have been painful for you and other alumni. I hope that it is some consolation to know that many of the concerns, educational experiments, and approaches Antioch pioneered have found fertile grounds all over the country, in other institutions, in individuals, and in numerous programs and projects. </p>
<p>Antioch leaves a wonderful legacy and you are right to be immensely proud of your association with it.</p>
<p>"Where the Arts Were Too Liberal"</p>
<p>Interesting op ed piece about Antioch in this morning's NY Times, written by a 70s graduate. </p>
<p>An excerpt:</p>
<p>“It was liberalism gone mad,” a former professor, Hannah Goldberg, once told me, and she was right. The college seemed to forget the pragmatism that had been a key to its ethos, and tried blindly to extend its mission beyond education to social reform. But there were too many new programs and too little cash reserve to deal with the inevitable growing pains. </p>
<p>For the increasingly vocal radical members of the community, change wasn’t going far enough or fast enough. They wanted revolution, but out there in the middle of the cornfields the only “bourgeois” thing to fight was Antioch College itself. The let’s-try-anything, free-thinking society of 1968 evolved into a catastrophic blend of legitimate paranoia (Nixon did keep enemies lists, and the F.B.I. did infiltrate campuses) and postadolescent melodrama. In 1973, a strike trashed the campus and effectively destroyed Antioch’s spirit of community. The next year, student enrollment was down by half.</p>
<p>When I was in college - and I graduated in 1973, the same year that Antioch's students launched the strike that accelerated that school's slow decline - Antioch was among a handful of schools that were marking new paths in education. UC-Santa Cruz was new, and was harder to get into than the more established UC-B. Reed College was gaining popularity. University of the Pacific had created an "alternative" college that it marketed with pictures of long-haired kids playing guitars. Antioch, however, stood apart: it had been travelling this path for generations, and it was attracting students who were every bit as talented as those at Oberlin and Kenyon.</p>
<p>But, had those not-so-self-aware Antiochians paid more attention to their Marxian theory, they would have spotted the cautionary signpost that Karl carried over from his days with Hegel: that ideas contain their own contradictions. That was never more apparent than, in 1973, when the students of Antioch launched their protest that began the destruction of Antioch. In the end, the zeal to take on the establishment resulted in the destruction of the very organization that nurtured their zeal. Who would have thought (well, Marx, of course, but ...)?</p>
<p>From our vantage point in history, we have seen UCSC sink to the second-lowest ranking among the UCs, we never hear about that thing at UOP, and we aren't really sure whether Reed has fallen in the US News rankings because of the way they treat the rankings or because it really has fallen. Schools that have embraced these unfortunate and illiberal traditions, also, have faded: Occidental College, back in the day, was really one of the best schools in the west - a close rival to Pomona; today, under the thrall of a group of ultra-left-wing and ultra-orthodox PC faculty, it's lost its way and is producing kids that don't get a second look by my firm's office in Los Angeles; Oberlin, once clearly the most respected and successful of the Ohio colleges, seems faded and frayed around the edges and now has stats that put it a hair behind Kenyon. </p>
<p>I don't think Antioch's problems are only about financial management or expansion. Kenyon, in the early 1960s, invested most of its endowment in two expansions that increased its size from less than 500 students to more than 1,500, and somehow it survived and prospered, even though its endowment is less than one-third the size of Oberlin's. </p>
<p>To be sure, some schools had advantages that Antioch did not enjoy. Earlham and Haverford are known for social awareness, but that reflects a Quaker tradition that's deeply rooted in a sense of responsibility and community that's hard to sustain at the more secular "liberal" institutions. </p>
<p>Nor can we see Antioch's demise, or Occidental's weakness, merely as a weakening of faith in the liberal arts: to be sure, kids at Western Kentucky or Witchita State should be studying occupational rather than liberal arts, but for the very top tiers of college kids, the liberal arts remains the best training (consider that, when I was still in college, one group of guys announced their success with monoclonal antibodies, the foundation for the biotech biz, and another announced the first microchip at a new company that they called Intel – if I had taken a class in something useful, I would have learned about the business of making steel). </p>
<p>One poster suggested that Antioch’s problems reflect the rising tide of conservatism in America. If this is not na</p>
<p>a detailed analysis.</p>
<p>Yes, I am mourning. Yes, the student strikes were damaging. I left in 1971 because my Dad was dying and I wanted to stop building up debt until I had a plan. I think I would have had similar concerns at any LAC because I thought, "where will I get a good job to support myself with a typical undergrad degree?". My answer was, "I don't know". Nursing school was a good answer for me and I went to Cornell. I think the co-op jobs at Antioch helped me be practical enough to have the doubts I needed to make a good decision. That's why I stand by Antioch--even though I left, it helped me make good life decisions. And I returned to it for grad school. It was/ is a great school. Say what you will--it has taken me where I needed to go. It has always taken risks. We could learn from that.</p>
<p>My note above mentioned Reed College, and I betrayed my ignorance of that school. It appears Reed sank in the ratings because it values things beyond the rankings, and it’s doing well by many measures: admissions applications are up sharply, Reed is financially sound and it remains in the top ranks of colleges that produce PhDs.</p>
<p>It’s not my kind of school, but it’s right for some kids and it’s helped many people to advance their lives, which is why it has earned a place in our world of higher education. There’s a lot of value to everyone when we have a diversity among our schools – church schools, progressive schools, even schools like USC – with a rich variety of ideas and approaches that flow from those differences. </p>
<p>Colleges like Reed – and, once, Antioch – brought fresh thinking and produced people with different perspectives, keeping everyone else honest and on their toes and, sometimes, doing things that were so good everyone had to copy them. </p>
<p>My note, above, also mentioned Duke, and let be elaborate on that, too. With its huge endowment and its classes of well-grounded students, it’ll be OK. But a lesser school could ill afford what Duke is weathering: 80-some pig-headed and illiberal ideologues on the faculty who, after the lacrosse hoax, put on public display their ugly prejudices, their slavish devotion to convention and their intolerance for real diversity. At the end of the day, that - more than the financial or managerial missteps - cost Antioch its life.</p>
<p>I visited Antioch the day before the announcement. I had applied and was accepted to transfer there this fall. After my visit I was sure I had found the right school for me. I was disheartened to find out the news just a day following my visit to Antioch.</p>
<p>I'm going to betray a little ignorance, here: I actually thought Antioch had closed years ago. I'd heard that some of the satellite campuses were still in existence, but, when even the conservative ISI Guide to "Choosing the Right College" doesn't bother to take pot shots at you -- that to me, suggests that the Yellow Springs campus had been operating under the radar for quite some time. Thirty years is ample time to recover from a even a violent student protest (witness Columbia.) Once the protests die down you have to figure out what your core mission is; operating a traditional liberal arts AND SCIENCE campus in flyover country was just not Antioch's primary focus, and in today's competitive environment that's like taking your eyes off the road at ninety miles an hour.</p>
<p>"One poster suggested that Antioch’s problems reflect the rising tide of conservatism in America. If this is not na</p>
<p>I worked at Antioch for four years in the 80's ... When I arrived as new director of admissions, they had also hired a new president, and the hope was that a new admissions initiative, combined with fundraising, would "save" the college. When I interviewed on campus, my first impression was shock at the state of physical facilities ... but ten minutes into the first interview and I wanted to be part of the place. The people were remarkable.</p>
<p>A noble idea ... establishing numerous satellite campuses to bring education to adult students and others underrepresented in higher education. Unfortunately, spending the school's endowment to achieve this idea was financially irresponsible. The impact was felt at the Yellow Springs campus and, over time, at other failing satellite campuses.</p>
<p>During the time I was there, the president made some tough decisions about closing the last satellite campuses which were not financially viable and began a successful fund-raising effort to re-establish an endowment for the college. </p>
<p>In admissions, we promoted what was unique about Antioch, hoping to attract students whose values were in line with Antioch's mission and history. We were successful for four years. However, that approach was criticized by some members of the Antioch community, who believed that attracting a more generic student body was the way to assure Antioch's longevity.</p>
<p>For anyone who studied or worked there, Antioch was a school that changed lives ... and it always will be. The "liberal" reputation is warranted ... but Antiochians are cutting edge thinkers, movers and shakers, individuals who are not afraid to perceive the world differently. Regardless of the professional field they enter, they make a difference because they are courageous thinkers. Beyond that, because of the co-op program, which requires these idealists to work repeatedly in the "real world" as part of their educational experience, they emerge as practical idealists, regardless of how they enter. </p>
<p>If Antioch walked away from its mission in an attempt to become viable, that approach was misguided. It is through a celebration of uniqueness that an institution positions itself, in both an idealistic and practical sense. </p>
<p>If Antioch is gone, then that is our loss. Antioch filled a unique place in higher education. Antioch changed the lives of its students through its unique educational philosophy ... and its students have made a difference in our lives, through the contributions they have made to our world.</p>
<p>Great post, Admisscouns.</p>
<p>How sad that there is no longer a market for the Antiochs of the world...I guess too many kids just want to major in business or economics and be in line for million dollar bonuses at Goldman-Sachs.....</p>