<p>
</p>
<p>Which, of course, speaks not at all to whether the LAC is the kind of place that best facilitates a student getting a top-quality undergraduate education.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>About as much as it rankles me when people make ridiculous statements like “A liberal arts college without a robust research program is little more than a high school.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Oh, get off your high horse. No one talks about access and affordability when USNews time rolls around. Schools don’t climb to the top of those rankings by opening their doors to “all students with the intellectual ability and curiosity, to supply society with a skilled workforce.” Quite the opposite, they use “prestige inflation” to game their way up the ladder by spending the most money on the fewest students. Here’s how Wesleyan compares to the top five National Liberal Arts Colleges in terms of percent of overall budget spent on program versus “administration”:</p>
<p>Bowdoin - 89% - 7%
WESLEYAN- 85% - 10%
Williams - 86% - 11%
Middlebury - 79% - 19%
Swarthmore - 78% - 19.5%
Amherst - 75% - 22%
[Source: <a href=“http://www.charitynavigator.org/][/url”>http://www.charitynavigator.org/][/url</a>]</p>
<p>Here are the same six colleges with the nominal dollar amounts spent on administration:</p>
<p>Bowdoin - $10.6 million
WESLEYAN - $22.3 million
Williams - $23.5 million
Middlebury - $47 million
Swarthmore - $28.5 million
Amherst - $46.8 million</p>
<p>par72: Holy Cross has a similar enrollment (2,800) and endowment (~$600 million), however, Wesleyan’s yearly budget is $40 million larger. Part of this is a smaller student:faculty ratio of 9:1 vs. 11:1 at Holy Cross. Taking a quick glance at financial reports of both institutions, there is a $30 million difference in “Instruction” spending (53 vs. 83 million). I’m not sure exactly what this term encompasses, but that’s most of the difference. An endowment of $800 million (the whole 12 moving quarter thing, yada yada) pays out $40 million a year if assuming 5% payout. </p>
<p>Whatever reason Wesleyan’s budget is that much bigger (I don’t think much can be trimmed, as most of that is the larger faculty) Wesleyan is trying to do even more than Holy Cross in terms of academics, despite having similar endowment payouts and similar tuition. It would take a huge increase in the endowment (basically that $800 million I mentioned) to get Wesleyan to its peers for endowment/student. It is trying to hit far above its weight, in terms of money, and this (ending need-blind) is the result.</p>
<p>To make a long story short, the endowment issues have nothing to do with lack of alumni success or giving. 52% of Wesleyan alumni give, and last year total giving came to $37 million (Holy Cross got $29 million). In 1980 Wesleyan’s endowment equaled William and Amherst. However, Wesleyan did not seek out alumni donations as actively back then, and missed the market run up of the 90’s compounding. It also used most of the money it raised in its annual fund, instead of putting that money into the endowment. I see that Holy Cross used $13 million for its annual fund last year, out of $29 million given (45%). Until a few years ago, Wes spent 75% of what it got yearly, putting very little into the endowment. Those numbers are almost completely reversed now, so as long as the markets hold, Wes should do just fine (and a new capital campaign will help).</p>
<p>@annasdad,</p>
<p>I was actually going to expound on why I think it’s important that professors at LACs be active in academia, but didn’t want to make my post even more off-topic. Well, here it is:</p>
<p>Developing personal relationships with people who publish articles, write books, and do meaningful, innovative research is in itself a learning experience that cannot easily be replicated at most research universities, where not everyone gets the opportunity to interact with professors that closely, or at small colleges where the faculty are not at the forefront of their fields and complete personal projects only rarely. LACs with generous research funds and ambitious faculty are well positioned to provide the middle ground between these two. The reason this is important at all is that the production of knowledge is a process most people need to observe for themselves to be able to replicate, or they’d never even know what it entails. A school that is dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge, but not to generating it, may produce competent and informed graduates, but I’d question its capacity to equip them with the skills (or even just the confidence/frame of mind) necessary to go further than that and make academic/scientific advancements themselves.</p>
<p>Of course there will always be individual exceptions, people who take to scientific work/entrepreneurship/whatever like ducks to water, without prior exposure to the sort of environment where knowing how to generate original ideas on demand is commonplace, but I’m not one of them. In my experience, one of the big differences between high school and college is just that: College has given me the opportunity to observe processes I’d only had vague notions of in high school, namely writing, editing, and submitting books and articles for publication, presenting at conferences, securing research grants and using them, uncovering and analyzing new archaeological evidence, designing scientific questions & experiments, participating in national and international social networks for academics sharing a specific area of interest (tiny, internet-based republics of letters, if you will), etc. The result is that now I handle the stuff I study with far greater confidence–not as a mysterious artefact that’s been passed down to me for safekeeping, but as something malleable and ever-changing that I might one day be in a position to influence myself, if I work hard enough.</p>
<p>It’s kinda obvious to me that this change is entirely due to the way my college professors (and even the upperclassmen I’ve met) think about their fields of study, in which they publish actively (or are currently trying to get involved, in the students’ case), but if you don’t agree with me, I don’t know what to say to you to change your mind.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The vast majority of schools are need-blind in admissions. It means nothing if there’s not enough aid for students to be able to afford to attend. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Berea College.</p>
<p>Interesting numbers JW, I would be curious to see where Pomona College is on your list of top 5 Liberal Arts colleges, you reference US News but you have left them out of your example.
Your link did not work and I would be curious to see a West coast represent.</p>
<p>just eliminate the “]” from the link and it will work (got attached to JW’s link): [Charity</a> Navigator - America’s Largest Charity Evaluator | Home](<a href=“http://www.charitynavigator.org%5DCharity”>http://www.charitynavigator.org)</p>
<p>seems Pomona tops the list, with 90% on program, only 5% on administration ($7.6 million)</p>
<p>College Board is not the only game–see ACT which has become more popular/common outside just midwest.</p>
<p>Thank you S-34!</p>