Education Commons^™

The Small College Imperative: From Survival To Transformation, Mary B. Marcy

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Small colleges and universities serve a profoundly important role in American society. They provide the rigorous, personalized experience that is the hallmark of the best of higher education. In the process, they build opportunity and encourage civic engagement among a new generation of citizens.

The landscape for these institutions has changed dramatically in recent years. Declining numbers of traditional college-age students have coincided with a shift in populations moving away from areas with a large number of small private institutions. The high-tuition and high-financial-aid model of funding private colleges and universities is generating less net-tuition revenue, while tuition-discounting rates continue …