Out of curiosity I looked up Notable Alumni on Google. The founder of Stanford University went there in the 1800s, studying law (Leland Stanford).
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Surprised to see Penn State will merge both law schools and closing the university Park campus Law School.
Wonder if the commonwealth campuses will be downsized next.
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The article states that both locations will remain open but be operated as one school.
Open until fall 2023 entering class graduates at University Park @TomSrOfBoston
The article contains the usual gripes and concerns among faculty and students when a change is proposed at any college. For institutions that claim to be preparing young people for an increasingly fluid and constantly changing world there is tremendous resistance to change.
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Colleges are incredibly conservative institutions, for the literal (rather than political) meaning of conservative.
But griping by students and faculty in these cases is nothing if not reasonable—from the faculty because there is worry about their livelihoods (particularly since colleges seem to make these announcements in ways that are badly timed with regard to the academic hiring cycle) and students because there is worry about whether they’ll be able to finish their degrees in a timely and affordable manner.
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Never heard of New Jersey City University but they are cutting programs and laying off faculty.
University in N.J. to lay off 30 professors, eliminate 37% of programs - pennlive.com
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Holy Names University in Oakland, CA looks like they will be closing -
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This one is super depressing to me. There are so few liberal arts colleges in the deep south, so I especially hope they will be successful in reestablishing their endowment.
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Interesting. Why is that, do you think?
I think it’s a combination of factors.
Historically, people (aka, men) in the south who were college-educated had been educated at home by private tutors and then would either go to the military academies (like West Point) or would go to Europe to the great universities (Oxford, Sorbonne), and then they would return to their elite life. (At some point the Ivy League or similar may have joined that list.) I think this was pretty typical prior to the Civil War, and I have a feeling (though don’t really know) that for those who made it past Reconstruction while maintaining their economically advantaged state, that it probably continued until about WWI.
But Reconstruction would probably not have been a period for much in the way of starting colleges, outside of HBCUs, I would guess. And there haven’t been that many nonprofit universities that have been started in the last 100 years, certainly not liberal arts colleges. And with the growing pre-professionalization of the college degrees, I don’t have tons of hope.
But in terms of southern liberal arts schools, there might be 50, which actually surprises me. That is a list of private colleges with an undergrad population below 3,000 that offer a major in history and are located in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, or Mississippi. The total number of qualifying schools in each state were listed, as well as the first five in alphabetical order.
Alabama 10: Birmingham-Southern, Faulkner, Huntingdon, Miles, Oakwood
Florida 12: Ave-Maria, Bethune-Cookman, Eckerd, Flagler, Florida College
Georgia 19: Agnes Scott, Berry, Brenau, Brewton-Parker, Covenant
Louisiana 4: Centenary, Louisiana Christian U. (formerly Louisiana College), U. of Holy Cross, Xavier
Mississippi 5: Belhaven, Blue Mountain, Millsaps, Mississippi College, Tougalou
Despite living in the deep south, there are many of these names that are totally unknown to me (like Faulkner, Miles, Brewton-Parker, and Blue Mountain). This might be an area where I need to do more research to see what kind of experience and education are being provided at these schools.
And yes, it could be argued whether all the states included here qualify as “the deep south.”
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Fascinating. Thank you.
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Add to that the fact that until relatively recently the south was far more rural and less populated than the northeast - this changed, of course, when AC became widely available. The elite still went to college, but there were fewer of them.
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There are a ton on small colleges in North and South Carolina that I would classify as LACs although they technically may not be only liberal arts colleges. They are 2000ish students, on red brick campuses, usually suburban or rural. Many have (had) religious affiliations: Queens, Belmont Abbey, Limestone, Presbyterian, Mt Olive, Mars Hill. They all have a very southern feel and most started as colleges and added research programs, nursing programs or teaching degrees later (to stay alive).
I also consider North and South Carolina as ‘southern’.
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When I google “how many liberal arts college are in X (state)” even NC and SC come up with fewer than PA by quite a bit - actual numbers vary based upon site and I didn’t click on those. I just looked at the search pages.
I suspect many in the south (or west) are also younger than those in PA. As places gained population, more colleges were formed.
I see no need to diss those in the south. My two boys who chose LACs both went south, one to GA and another to FL. It’s merely factual that there are fewer there.
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I’m not dissing any of the southern colleges. I just think there are a lot that function as small LAC which might not be classified as such because they have added a nursing school branch or added research centers. I think they once were with a concentration on liberal arts, religious teachings, teaching but had to add more to survive. They have the other parts of LAC like small classes, teachers who live on or near campus and mingle with the students, offer few or no graduate classes, etc.
All of the schools we looked at in the south were much too small for me, but daughter found one she liked. Of course, Smith was much too small for me too and daughter didn’t like it either (other daughter liked it).
I just didn’t find the southern schools of about 2000 students much different than the NE schools of the same size. As @Creekland said, most of the southern schools are newer. Would anyone start a new LAC today? Probably couldn’t survive. A lot of the LACs have joined forces and formed into a consortium. Honestly, that’s the only think that would make me consider an LAC but I like big schools because I think they offer a better variety, and for me that was important.
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I would say they are southern, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider them part of the deep south. South Carolina might be culturally deep south, but I think that’s more of a historical cultural push rather than a geographical one.
Using the same parameters of private, nonprofit, 4- year colleges that offer a major in history, these are the number of schools within 250 miles of the state capitals:
Raleigh, NC (27616 zip code): 72 schools
Columbia, SC (29210 zip code): 75 schools
Atlanta, GA (30312 zip code): 72 schools
Jackson, MS (39209 zip code): 26 schools
Montgomery, AL (36116 zip code): 39 schools
Baton Rouge, LA: (70816): 11 schools
Tallahassee, FL (32301 zip code): 24 schools
Notice, these were schools within 250 miles, so many might be at least a half day drive away. But if you look at Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and also Florida, there’s only about 15% to 50% of the number of liberal arts colleges of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
For fun, I looked up a couple of different, non-southern states:
Harrisburg, PA (17120 zip code): 132 schools
Albany, NY (12207 zip code): 117 schools
Columbus, OH (43085 zip code): 101 schools
St. Paul, MN (55116 zip code): 41 schools
Suffice it to say, I’m in one of the states with the lowest numbers.
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I apologize if you thought I was meaning you were. I wasn’t. I was talking about myself - that “I” wasn’t dissing those schools, just stating numerical facts. I’ve lived in NY, VA, RI, FL, and PA and it’s amazing how many schools there are around here compared to when we lived in FL.
The west, particularly the mountain west, is certainly not overflowing with LACs either. There are some but some states have hardly any at all.
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