Two Experts Discuss: "Can Liberal Arts Colleges Thrive despite Economic Challenges?"

"Unless you're expecting manna from heaven, you'll have to learn how to deliver the quality education you now offer, for less," said Robert Zemsky, one of two experts who discussed the economic challenges facing liberal arts colleges at the March 25 faculty meeting. Zemsky is founding director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research on Higher Education. Joining him was David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and author of Liberal Arts Colleges: Thriving, Surviving, or Endangered?

"The basic economic factor of the education sector is that, collectively, private colleges are attempting to fill more spaces than there are people willing and able to pay [for them] at posted prices," said Breneman. One typical way of dealing with such an "excess supply" problem--cutting size--isn't practical for colleges, so they manipulate the price. This takes the form of "tuition discounting," meaning various forms of financial aid. "Need-blind" admission (accepting students on academic grounds without considering whether they can pay for their education) is now "very unusual," Breneman said, because of its high cost, despite what he called "a pitched battle for students."

Zemsky described the paradox that "across the country, colleges are raising their sticker prices [tuition, room, and board costs] yet they're losing money. In relative terms, it costs [students] less to attend college than it did a decade ago" because of increased financial aid. He said that the continuing financial drain on colleges that skyrocketing financial aid presents can't continue indefinitely. "The long-term problem is that we've invented a form of education that's too expensive."

Zemsky shared lessons culled from working with 150 institutions as chair of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable. Infighting and turf wars must be overcome to make and implement collective decisions. Curricula should be made student-centered, "asking always, 'What do we expect to happen to students [because of this course] and how will we know it's happened?'" He cited athletics and performing arts faculty as models in creating student-centered programs. The traditional institutional "core" (tenured faculty, traditional-aged students, etc.) is being eroded by "perimeter" economic agents such as service programs, part-time faculty, and evening divisions. To survive and thrive, both the "core" and "perimeter" groups at liberal arts colleges must join and "collectively decide how to deliver quality education you now deliver, for less," concluded Zemsky.