Tell us about Kenyon...
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Anonymous
Why do they need saving? They have sizable endowments and plenty of customers who want the product. |
Anonymous
| Some of us are not afraid of new ideas and different approaches. |
Anonymous
It is clear that you do not "represent Kenyon at all" because you wrote a response without a personal attack & made strong points. The educational environment is changing. Soon the number of US high school graduates will be declining. Competition for students will increase. New courses of study will need to be implemented. Affiliating with a major National University will make Kenyon College attractive to a larger number of students. Many LACs affiliate with National Universities for 3 + 2 programs in engineering. As technology continues to grow, substantial investments will need to be made by institutions of higher education in order to serve the needs of society & in order to meet potential students and future employers demands. Except for a few with exceptionally large endowments, small LACs are ill equipped to do so. Kenyon College could be the premier two year college in the nation while retaining its current strengths, but offering a wider variety of options and opportunities to its clients. If you prefer to remain static, then ask Borders Bookstores how that works out. |
Anonymous
I agree many small colleges face some kind of existential risk, perhaps more because of the affordability issue than demographics which are often overstated as a problem (while we are at peak levels of high school grads now the expected decline is only around 10 pct in the decades ahead). But I don’t see leading LACS as currently failing in their educational mission, even in the hard sciences. There is nothing inherently broken in the model of delivering undergraduate education in a smaller and more personalized setting. Perhaps there is room for creative partnerships with large research universities, similar to study abroad. Students of small colleges may benefit from a semester or two spent at a larger school and vice versa. LACs today are more selective than ever, which means they have more potential customers than ever. Part of this has to do with what we read on these pages - extremely well endowed major universities are subsidizing many more students from low income backgrounds than they used to. These schools used to rely heavily on tuition paying upper middle class students but such students are increasingly being iced out of these schools and forced to find alternatives. Many students find smaller liberal arts colleges viable substitutes for the midsized private universities they might have otherwise attended to pursue a similar course of study. With so many good students flowing into the LAC population who in a prior generation may have had their sights on Ivy League schools and similar, the overall caliber of the student body of these LACs has become much higher making them even more desirable environments. In short, I see these colleges as thriving at the moment and providing a valuable service for students interested in an intensive top notch educational experience. The demographic shift is a headwind but these schools are not on the verge of collapse by any means. It is important to emphasize the total capacity of the LAC market is quite small. The University of Michigan alone has over 30k undergraduates- it is the size of 15-20 LACs. So the entire pool of selective LACs out there only represents a small fraction of the higher Ed market- collectively the size of a few large state schools. LACs are a tiny percentage of the overall higher Ed market and with a differentiated offering that many customers seem to value highly, they should be able to remain relevant while they continue to innovate and get better. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing all of higher ed though is cost. Schools that offer merit aid to top upper middle class students who don’t qualify for financial aid will do well as total annual cost of attendance barrels towards the 100k mark. The very affluent will pay up for the best product but the less affluent will increasingly be sensitive to relative price as they already are. |
Anonymous
Thank you for your response. In addition to changing demographics, I think that the ending statement of your fourth paragraph ("...they [LACs] should be able to remain relevant while they continue to innovate and get better.") deserves particular attention. Change and innovation can be--and usually is--expensive. Remaining relevant is a key issue. Schools of Journalism have had to change to remain relevant over the past decade or so; writing programs and English majors may soon face similar challenges in light of artificial intelligence (AI) programs and demands for more focus on STEM training. I do agree with your statement: "Perhaps there is room for creative partnerships with large universities...." I can envision an LAC such as Kenyon College partnering with one or two large universities which have resources such as research facilities, teaching hospitals, programs, and professors not available at almost all LACs. Cost is relative. A significant and growing number appear to view an LAC education as a luxury. This perspective is supported by the high percentage of LAC graduates who continue their education in graduate or professional schools. Why not attack the exorbitant cost of an LAC education with more relevant options ? |
Anonymous
I think what you are concerned about is more liberal arts education in general rather than its delivery in the form of a small college. As I see it, the only major difference between say Yale with 6,500 students and a 2,000 student LAC is size (excluding engineering). Sure, many national universities have specialized pre-professional programs (engineering, nursing, hotel management, business) but the majority of their students seem to opt for arts and sciences. LACs are basically smaller versions of the schools of arts and sciences that sit at the core of the undergraduate offering of large universities. The hundreds or thousands of tiny liberal arts colleges around the country that no one has ever heard of probably have a somewhat bleak future and need to become more pre-professional. But there still seems to be strong demand for that core arts and sciences education whether as a prelude to advanced degrees or as a pathway to a career path that involves a broad range of cognitive skills. While the bottom half of LACs nationally face a lot of risk, what seems to be happening at the moment is that the better LACs are getting the overflow of arts and sciences students at national universities. As mentioned, swollen endowments mean these schools can now give away half their spots to low income kids for whom these opportunities were not previously available. These schools have essentially created more demand by subsidizing new customers and will continue to do so. Top LACs will benefit by offering capacity to meet that expanded demand created by aggressive financial aid spending. |
Anonymous
This is all well and good, but kids who once would have gone to Harvard or another Ivy but just missed the cut, are not now choosing Kenyon. If they chosse a LAC, they are going to Williams, Amherst, Colby, Hamilton, or Swarthmore. More than likely though, they are going to choose USC, UVA, or Michigan over Kenyon, every time. The previous PP who pointed out why they face a crisis is right. We are at the very peak of college applications. They are going to start decreasing after the class of 2024 and schools like Kenyon, F&M, Lafayette and a few other mid-tier LACs could change to stay relevant or dry up. |
Anonymous
You are positing that demand for high quality liberal arts education for some reason ends at Colby and Hamilton (which are now at or approaching single digit acceptance rates) but this isn’t true. Just read this message board everyday. You’ve got kids with 1500 deciding between Union and Skidmore. Kenyon’s median SAT last I checked is like 1420. Until demand for Ivy League type schools starts to wane (and it won’t because those endowments keep growing which permits those schools to wave in more and more low income students) the LACs will continue to have strong demand. Many of the LACs themselves now have huge endowments which allow more low income students to attend, further reducing the number of available seats. I see all these schools on an upward trajectory and the difference between a top LAC and a “mid-tier” LAC is pretty marginal at this point, just look at the CDS data. Just as the difference between a top LAC and an Ivy is now marginal. So many smart kids, but not so many seats. |
Anonymous
| SLACs, Kenyon among them, will always provide a place for high income families who don't have the stats (or offer up any type of diversity) for Top 20 national universities, who nonetheless want an excellent education, develop lifelong friends and connections, and fun time before eventually going on to grad school. Asian immigrant families just don't see SLACs as providing any pre-professional training and would for the most part rather end up at a second tier state flagship or perhaps stem focused places like Carnegie Mellon or Case Western. That is the predicament of the SLACs. They want diversity. Diversity doesn't understand or want them. |
Anonymous
There were plenty of Asian immigrant families going to admitted student days at top SLACs this year. |
Anonymous
Asian representation is light at SLACs vs Ivies, although some have pretty high percentages. Haverford seems to be well over 20 percent and Pomona high teens, just as random examples. The fast growing “mixed race” category also seems to be predominantly part Asian. Some Asian families may not appreciate the low key prestige of SLACs but a major factor here is also that SLACs generally don’t have engineering programs and in some cases strong computer science programs. Comp Sci is in fact doing a lot to drive demand at the big state schools as well as Ivies, which perhaps squeezes some traditional liberal arts kids into SLACs. |
Anonymous
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Some may see the change in MBA program offerings to become STEM certified in response to employer demands/needs as an indication of the type of change that may be forthcoming in liberal arts colleges.
MBA programs are experiencing strong demand for more technology integrated into the curriculum. Additionally, there is increasing demand for one year MBA degree programs over the traditional two year full-time MBA program in order to lower program cost and to lessen the opportunity cost regarding lost income. As applied to undergraduate liberal arts degrees, one approach might be to integrate internships as a degree requirement. Higher education is too expensive for many and often lacks practical courses and experience thereby increasing the need for further costly education beyond a college degree in the humanities or liberal arts. Something needs to be done to address the crippling burden of student loan indebtedness. LACs need to consider these matters ASAP in order to remain relevant. |
Anonymous
| Kenyon is a SLAC that says all the right things about being progressive and a vehicle for social change, but at the end of the day is a pit stop for top 1% per center HHI kids who did not get into Amherst or Williams, before inevitably pursuing a JD or MBA at a top ten money maker institution. |
Anonymous
I don’t disagree that their student population heavily skews toward the 1%. I do however disagree in that I do not think they skew pre-professional. I think of the Patriot league SLACs (Bucknell and Colgate) when I think of that cohort. I think the Kenyon cohort skews more “artsy”. And to everyone still reading this post - as with any school I suggest you go visit. I would also suggest you read the course catalog and descriptions especially for your DC’s intended major. We visited. I liked it - great fit for a major for my DS - but too small for my DS. |
Anonymous
Yep. I have a family member who graduated a decade ago, and this was the path: researcher, MBA, now a senior marketing manger at a fortune 500. |