<p>Interesting. </p>
<p>In the endowment per student listings I’m looking at, as of 2005 Wesleyan ranked rather far behind Williams and Amherst.
[University</a> Endowment per Student](<a href=“http://www.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=604]University”>http://www.data360.org/graph_group.aspx?Graph_Group_Id=604)</p>
<p>When you say, “by the beginning of the decade” (sentence 2), you mean the 1960s? And that is when graduate programs in the sciences were added?</p>
<p>yup, “Doctoral programs in the sciences and ethnomusicology were instituted in the early 1960s.”
[About</a> Wesleyan: University History [Wesleyan University]](<a href=“http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/uhistory.html]About”>http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/uhistory.html)
although, it is my understanding that several of them had been in place on an experimental basis since the late 1950s.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has had a singularly more conservative investment policy than either Amherst or Williams since the 1970s. Only 17% of its operating budget is dependent on endowment proceeds and, to date, it has not had to issue taxable debt in order to fund current operations.</p>
<p>Wow this article was somewhat depressing to me knowing that the structure of undergraduate education that I specifically picked when I decided to attend Amherst could be dying out. I deliberately picked a liberal arts school over a more preprofessional school because of the small nuturing environment and the individualized attention that I would receive. I think it would be very sad to see small LACs disappear because they emphasize a completeness in education, studying all different fields, to become well versed in many different subjects (This of course does not mean in any way, shape, or form that preprofessional schools don’t nuture a complete and well balanced education) As they say about a liberal arts education, “A liberal arts education trains you for nothing, but prepares you for everything.”</p>
<p>Is anyone here aware that there are, in fact, liberal arts engineering schools (Harvey Mudd comes to mind)? I don’t see why a broad, academic minded approach is more applicable to poetry than particle physics. </p>
<p>Likewise, there are vocational art schools.</p>
<p>I’m aware of it; the question is whether Pomona is aware of it?;)</p>
<p>why are people trying to justify how great LACs are? Just because one guy makes 173k for working for obama with only an undergrad LAC degree doesn’t mean every liberal arts major makes the same. </p>
<p>Liberal arts prepares you for graduate school, but with only an undergrad your not gonna get anywhere.</p>
<p>I don’t see why an engineering or English degree from a LAC would be less valuable from any other college.</p>
<p>i think it’s interesting that some 50 odd years after after Sputnik and the revolution it inspired in terms of university growth, that when people say, “liberal arts”, the first thing that comes to mind is still, the LAC.:)</p>
<p>
See post #12, containing examples of people who in fact got pretty far.</p>
<p>Those are famous people. What percentage of less famous people are so successful with terminal B.A. degrees in the liberal arts? If earnings are your metric, have a look at the Forbes survey of “top colleges for getting rich”:
[Top</a> Colleges For Getting Rich - Forbes.com](<a href=“Top Colleges For Getting Rich”>Top Colleges For Getting Rich)</p>
<h1>1 is Dartmouth, the most LAC-like of the 8 Ivy League schools.</h1>
<p>Or, browse the Payscale.com data directly:
[Top</a> Colleges - Salary Potential By School Type](<a href=“2023 College Rankings by Salary Potential | Payscale”>2023 College Rankings by Salary Potential | Payscale)
Notice in the Payscale.com tables that the mid-career median salaries for graduates of the top LACs, people with college degrees only, are all in the $100-120K range. That’s the same for all but 3 of the top engineering schools (MIT, CalTech and Mudd grads do break the $120K mark). For half the Ivy League schools, average graduates with terminal B.A. degrees earn more than $120K at mid-career. Presumably, a large majority of the Ivy grads have liberal arts degrees.</p>
<p>What is perhaps most interesting is the spread between the starting and median salaries. For the top Ivy and LAC grads, it appears to be fairly typical that the salary doubles. For the engineering grads, less so. It’s like what they say about sex: You can only sleep your way to the middle. Similarly for undergraduate degrees: If you want not just to get that first job but to go far, your best bet may very well be to major in the liberal arts and sciences, not in a technical or pre-professional field. Though an engineering degree certainly appears to be very marketable, with decent advancement prospects.</p>
<p>Now, how many graduates at typical LACs go on to graduate school at all? Here are some figures for Rhodes College:
[Rhodes</a> College | Graduate School Acceptance Rate](<a href=“http://www.rhodes.edu/careerservices/9056.asp]Rhodes”>http://www.rhodes.edu/careerservices/9056.asp)
It appears that only about 30% of one recent graduating class went directly to graduate/professional schools (although the acceptance rates for those who applied were very high.)</p>
<p>good grief john wesley, what on earth do you have against the sagehens?</p>
<p>absolutely nothing! the question was whether everone knew that Harvey Mudd was a LAC? My answer is, perhaps not everyone at Pomona would agree with that statement:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062925581-post85.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062925581-post85.html</a></p>
<p>oops, sorry. Unjustified defensiveness on my part.</p>
<p>It would be sad to see LACs close down, but again, one of the posters here made a very good point. Any criterion for evaluating an educational system should start from a discussion of the average graduate from such a system - i.e. look at the average LAC schools. </p>
<p>First, two points- One, using the mean and not the top quartile as the starting point for debate, and two, determining what criterion should be used as ‘evidence’ for the value of the LAC system in society.</p>
<p>Does the graduate from a mid ranked LAC with an average debt of say, 50 K, fare any better or worse than his counterpart from a comparable university with the same amount of debt? (even then, claiming that a given LAC and a given university is ‘comparable’ is enough to start a flame war on CC) And how should we decide on the criterion of success anyway? Graduate admissions? Starting salary? The recently published Payscale?</p>
<p>Don’t give me exceptions. Exceptions comprise a minute proportion of the LAC cohort and cannot be used as foundations for asserting the uniqueness of the LAC. Not only are exceptions misused in this way, but they are worse, used as a comeback against those who charge that a given LAC is unknown and produces broadly educated nobodies. </p>
<p>Third point: Extending the discussion of using exceptions as a defense of the norm - what can such facts prove? Not a lot.</p>
<p>Exceptional people will, by and large, succeed, simply by dint of their motivation, desire and passion. This can only lead us to conclude that there were motivated students who attend liberal arts colleges, thrived in that environment, and became somebody. We cannot conclude anything definite on the impact that that environment had on that student that is relevant to his/her success. I appeal to the study quoted earlier in this thread (from MIT?) that the effect of the school is largely minor when compared to the habits, motivation and other ‘intrinsic’ features of the student in the assertion of such a statement. </p>
<p>So that concludes a little spiel against using exceptions to justify the LAC institution. Sure, it has produced greats, but so have the big universities, and in fact the big wigs produce so many more. Any sophist can seize upon this point and argue that the small number of famous (people with the most impact on society) people from the LACs, far from reflecting the value of the LAC, or even the potential payoff from an LAC education, instead reflects the inferiority of the institution.</p>
<p>On my personal view, I believe that exceptions are something in favor of the LAC, not against it. At the very least, I believe that exceptional people come from the LAC having thrived on the environment there, and not DESPITE the environment. And for now, I would rather believe that most of the ‘disappeared LACs’ were mediocre ones (with the exception of Antioch College). Which is a good thing, if this were really the case.</p>
<p>My speculation on the reasons behind this ‘disappearance’:</p>
<p>When one conducts a thought experiment, one should realize that fundamentally, such a shift can be construed as a simple statistical consequence of higher education accessibility. In the past, college education was more of a luxury - a ticket to the American dream, no doubt - but nonetheless inaccessible to a large proportion of the population. Thus the college-going cohort tended to be composed of the upper middle to the higher classes, which by dint of their income and family background, could afford to study classics and english (look, no offence to these majors meant, but if offence is taken, I understand) and still land a stable and respectable job. Do not forget that today, connections are still one of the most important routes to a good job, and not just corporate ones, and this was even more acute a few decades back. These observations, if taken to be valid, should lead us to conclude that the LACs, with their emphasis on broad based education and a disdain for ‘pre-professional’ education, had more support among the college society (the students, the parents, the alumnus and so on), a high representation relative to the research universities (but of course, by construction, the universities always had higher absolute enrollment than LACs in the States), and consequently many schools.</p>
<p>Now, when college education started to become more accessible, the priorities of the college-going cohort, on aggregate, started to change. No longer was college a ticket to the nebulous concept of ‘getting educated’, it was now increasingly, a ticket to a good job, and corporate one at that (recalling the yuppie generation in the 80’s). What aspects of the university matters most in the context of a job search? Prestige (signaling function) and networks (how many potential contacts). These two aspects will always render the LAC system fundamentally inadequate relative to their research university counterparts. And with the obsession of brand names and prestige in modern times, it is no wonder that the research university is more desirable for most college applicants.</p>
<p>Just because this post concentrated on demographics to provide an explanation on the erosion of the LAC system does not mean (far be it!) that it does not accord this effect to other explanations (perceived irrelevance of the liberal arts majors, for instance)</p>
<p>I hope I haven’t said a little in too many words. =/</p>
<p>I realized I never really said what the implications of my brain dump here means:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>This ‘disappearance’ could largely reflect a shift in priorities in college applicants caused by increased accessibility of higher education to a more diverse population which on aggregate, value pre-professional education more highly than the population decades ago.</p></li>
<li><p>But this should not reflect any fundamental flaw in the LAC system, much less reflect irrelevance of broad based education. As noted earlier, the LAC system has, and continues to be, an source of higher education innovations. In fact, I briefly note that there is something to be said where there is greater accessibility and communication between the students and the administration, something which the LAC (again, by construction) has more of. This kind of accessibility can foster greater innovation as educators and administrators hear more student input in improving the quality of education.</p></li>
<li><p>A few posters have noted that a liberal arts education is not incompatible with the inclusion of engineering programs, business programs and other ‘pre-professional’ programs. I agree. To discuss on the plausibility of internal realism in isolation and not apply it to psychoanalysis and identity theories in politics is a wasted educational opportunity. Or the application of physics in engineering. That said, I caution against posters who go the other way and argue that every liberal arts subject should be artificially conjoined to other subjects in an effort to make everything ‘eminently applicable’. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Many disciplines, while not exhibiting immediate real life applications, by dint of the intellectual rigor required in engaging in their debates, develop writing and critical analysis skills that can only help in a world where the glut of information is increasingly undermining our ability to sieve out what is important in decision making and what information we should take into account to constitute our beliefs and principles. And critical analysis, I argue, help in building a habit of self-reflection and humility, not in the sense that it make people indecisive hacks, but in the sense that it blunts epistemic arrogance and makes people more receptive to good advice, qualities which can only help in the real world. </p>
<p>Finally: At the end of the day, the central aim of a liberal arts college is to teach someone to ‘learn how to learn’. This is not a limiting, self-justifying slogan, but something which opens the doors to more opportunities and ultimately, independence. The intrinsic features of the LAC (teaching by professors only, smaller class sizes, more research opportunities per capita) will always be a great champion of this mission. As long as the LAC remains committed to such a mission, and remains open to evolving its curriculum to remain relevant to society, I am confident that the LAC, not just its structure, but its curriculum and commitment to the liberal arts, is not going to disappear.</p>
<p>Really sorry for the long posts.</p>
<p>I skimmed this thread and found it pretty silly in many respects. There are different needs for different people. I am a professor at a major research university. I teach in classes of 300+. For undergraduate education in science, I think the faculty here are better scientists than at most LACs. But even if they are, would my son be better sitting in my class of 300, or a less famous scientists class of 20 - for the purpose of UNDERGRADUATE education? I think the answer depends on the student. My son loves to engage in debate and exchange ideas, he is less likely to aggressively chase down endless opportunities where I teach. So I think he will be better off at an LAC.</p>
<p>Will he be pre-professional? Probably. So what! If he wants to go to law school or grad school in the sciences, I see nothing that suggests he would be categorically better prepared at Duke than at Wesleyan…it all depends on the student and how they get things put into their head.</p>
<p>I have supervised many graduate students. As I think of the most successful professional scientsts, they have come from the following undergraduate institutions (in no rank order): Berkley, Wesleyan, Juniata College, Kalamazoo College, UVA, Carleton, Princeton, Alice Lloyd College, University if Maryland. This seems to me to be a very broad list.</p>
<p>There are all sorts of paths…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Some people, including many posters on CC, frequently argue that there is no specific advantage in having a prominent scientist as an instructor in a freshman calculus or physics class . That is however a controversial issue. Take a look for example at [this essay](<a href=“http://www.math.cmu.edu/~wn0g/noll/RP.pdf”>http://www.math.cmu.edu/~wn0g/noll/RP.pdf</a>), which the well-known (and now retired) applied mathematician [Walter Noll](<a href=“Walter Noll - Wikipedia”>http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Noll</a>) wrote more than 10 years ago.</p>
<p>PS: To be fair, Noll’s essay is critical both of the professional teacher (IMHO often found at LACs) and of the modern “publish-or-perish” researcher, praising instead the “professor” as a mediator between those two aforementioned roles.</p>
<p>The 212 liberal arts colleges that …[were] identified in 1990 have now decreased to 137</p>
<p>Is there a list of the colleges that were closed?</p>
<p>I didnt see this info in the article. I skimmed the responses and searced in the thread but did not see this info.</p>
<p>if anyone has a link to list I would very much like to read it. </p>
<p>Thank you</p>