February
8, 2002
Front-Page
News
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Champion of the
Liberal Arts
The "Learning" section of the February 3 issue of the
Boston Globe featured a question-and-answer interview with Elaine
Tuttle Hansen '69, who was named the seventh president of Bates
College last month. When asked by the Globe about how she feels
about being the first woman to lead Bates [she will take over
in July], and how, if at all, that fact will affect her presidency,
she replied, "None of the schools in the New England Small
College Athletic Conference have women presidents at the moment.
None of the formerly men's colleges have women presidents. It
is peculiar to me. Most of this is really about the times. I think
if you could have looked ahead twenty or thirty years ago, you
would have said that this was about the time that women who were
educated would be ready to step into positions like this. This
is not about me, but about the way the world has changed."
Globe correspondent Shari Rudavsky noted that Hansen is, "a
graduate of Mount Holyoke College, [who] believes she is a steward
of the American liberal arts tradition" and asked the president-elect
what she perceived as the greatest competition Bates [and by extension,
all liberal arts colleges] now faces. "Fifty years ago, small
liberal arts colleges were educating probably 40 percent of the
population. Now, given the growth in so many different forms of
higher education—community colleges, distance education—only
about 3 percent of students go to liberal arts colleges. This
means we have to adapt, to preserve what's so wonderful about
liberal arts institutions and be willing to innovate and keep
up with the times. There is a certain amount of competition among
liberal arts colleges and the sense that you're being compared
to each other heightens the competition. I think we ought to be
very careful to collaborate with each other to make sure that
the entire model of education—the liberal arts, four-year
residential college—survives. I see the competition from
other, cheaper ways of providing postsecondary education as a
larger threat to us."
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