Well, I greatly appreciate thegoals of K’s program. Compare the two. Oberlin’s clearly speaks about challenging stereotypes while the other talks about leadership, modeling, fostering and developing frameworks…not a tough choice for me.
Oberlin:
and K:
Wow! What a difference! Kalamazoo is so much more honest and “up front” in the description. In actuality, Oberlin seems to value all the choices that are in keeping with their beliefs, and they value inclusion of all those that think like them.
Thank goodness I’m no longer helping anyone to choose a college, their commitment statement is SO misleading compared to actual practice. I don’t know Kalamazoo, but I presume all its faculty and students are predominantly minorities, with student attending on college grants? True?
Oberlin parent here. My daughter is a very happy first year student. She has yet to encounter any PC excesses. Rather, she has rigorous, challenging classes, accessible professors, and kind, sensible, intelligent friends. She has had access to superb musical performances of all genres.
Oberlin has always had a vocal leftist contingent and it gets a disproportionate amount of media attention. There are many students there who are serious about their learning and are seeking a quality education. That has been my daughter’s experience and we are happy with her choice.
Hopefully their new VP for admissions will come up with better metrics this year in order to meet enrollment targets.
Mine is a music kid, who did not end up at Oberlin, but was so impressed with the incredible support from all students on campus for performances of all kinds. It was downright sweet to see the crowds heading into performance halls, and hear the cheers. As for PhD’s, many many musicians and composers do DMA’s and PhD’s these days: it’s one way to get funded and have venues, teaching and peers to collaborate with. This is happening with many of the arts. Oberlin kids tend more than most to go directly into the PhD without an intervening master’s/
Younghoss, K used to be predominantly Caucasian but with the past president,an African American and the new prez, a Latino, they have made huge strides. K is approaching 40% with this year’s cohort of international and non Caucasian students. I think that is very similar to Oberlin in terms of percentages of the student body.
Well it sounds like K is working on social justice, but it sure isn’t there yet.
I’ve got a son at Oberlin. He is definitely getting a rigorous education there, but I hope his degree won’t be devalued because of the shrill, anti-intellectual bent of a handful of students and one notorious, now disgraced faculty member.
I think they are somewhat related. Many social injustices are found in disenfranchised segments whether cultural, economic, religious etc. Simultaneously, many colleges that strive for diversity - cultural, geographic, economic, religious. That diversity can add vibrancy to a campus and is of interest to many students The Arcus Center for Social Justice. Leadership at K was developed a few years before the diversity efforts began at K Perhaps the trustees and president discovered that potential students found a predominantly upper middle class, predominantly Caucasian campus a drawback.
Yes, @eastcoast101 ,you are referring to Joy Karega, who was fired. She made some outrageous anti-Semitic comments and I think the school realized they needed to clean up their act.
Oberlin may be pretty liberal, but that liberal sense has helped break barriers for students - they are the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the country the second-oldest in the world, and they started admitting African American students in 1835 - 30 years before slavery ended in the U.S. and over 100 years before the civil rights movement. Many prominent African Americans - who later went onto figure in politics and start or teach at HBCUs right after emancipation - were educated at Oberlin. Oberlin was also an important stop on the Underground Railroad and was a “hotbed of abolitionism” in the 19th century.
Oberlin has had a reputation as the ultra-liberal, kinda-weird college in the Midwest for a really long time. It’s also long had a history of being viewed as ‘combative’; some Oberlin folks participated in John Brown’s rebellion at Harper’s Ferry, and Oberlin students were heavily involved in protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s and in the counterculture in general, as well as agitating for divestment from South Africa in the 1980s.
I don’t think that’s what’s causing this. In fact, there’s no real evidence that this is even a “slide” - many colleges have dips in enrollment or funds that aren’t necessarily indicative of trends year over year.
Oberlin has a “structural budget deficit” issue. Until it fixes it’s budget issues, any drop in enrollment (in this case, it was yield), will lead to cuts and salary freezes.
All of the bad press can’t be good for enrollment, as we’ve seen at other institutions. A dip in yield is like catching a cold, if you don’t have a sound budget, it can quickly turn into the flu.
@bluebayou I wonder if the progressive/liberal culture of the school is the reason for the difference between the performance of the endowment and the markets in general. If Oberlin is putting its money where its mouth is, then I imagine that a large portion of the endowment’s investments would be in socially/environmentally responsible holdings. These aren’t the types of companies that are likely to benefit from the changes expected from the Trump administration, and it’s these expected changes that are driving the overall markets up.
Many, many schools are experiencing dips in enrollment - there are fewer students in the traditional college age group. Many, many schools are finding it difficult to remain on a sound financial footing. The cost of compliance with federal regulations is increasing (if you have been paying attention to the current HEA reauthorization bill, you will see even more regulatory burden in the bill - from a Congress that says it wants to lower the cost of higher ed & reduce regulatory burden, by the way), the cost of employee benefits is rising, the cost of keeping pace with technology is high, the cost of cybersecurity protection is a necessity, the cost of upkeep of aging infrastructure is high, etc. Costs for small institutions are making it more & more difficult for these schools to stay in business.
Without naming colleges already mentioned here, or identifying other colleges, I will say that many colleges define diversity as different skin colors, not difference of thought. Essentially saying- you can come here no matter your skin color, as long as you think like us.
“Without naming colleges already mentioned here, or identifying other colleges, I will say that many colleges define diversity as different skin colors, not difference of thought. Essentially saying- you can come here no matter your skin color, as long as you think like us.”
Proof of this? I haven’t witnessed this. I think colleges are looking for all kinds of diversity - racial, gender, socioeconomic, and political, etc. Students, however, tend to self-select a lot of times.
I think you are certainly right that kids self select. But I also think it is obvious that colleges, particularly highly selective ones, tend to look for certain traits in students that the school believes will be an asset to the community the college is trying to build or maintain. In other words, “fit” is important.
Some times those traits are expressed in raw achievement numbers (like Cal Tech for example). Other times those traits are expressed in being “well lopsided”, like we see at many Ivys. Some schools though, like Oberlin, Wesleyan, Vassar and others seem to both attract and favor students who have a particular outlook on social policy/geopolitics. I don’t mean that as a knock btw, my daughter attends one of those schools and it is proving to be a great place for her. But I think it is obvious that places like Oberlin are both attractive to and attracted by students who share a common outlook on many issues.
Whether I could ever prove this in a courtroom I don’t know. Certainly there is a ton of selection bias, and the applicant pool at places like Oberlin or Vassar or Reed is going to be pretty heavily weighted to a certain type of kid, so we would expect to see more of that particular type matriculate there. But something is going on to create the atmosphere that is attractive to that type of student. I find it very hard to believe that all of this happened blindly.
Right. The article says they had the highest # of applicants ever for the conservatory. For arts and sciences they had fewer apps than last year, but last year was a record high #.
Sounds like they didn’t admit the right # of students - that’s a math problem, not a campus culture problem.
The historical stats on admission: http://www2.oberlin.edu/instres/irhome/admissions.pdf
I personally had an Oberlin acceptance as an option way back when because my mom made me apply…I declined it because I had no interest in going to Ohio. (Life is funny)