ADRIAN, Mich. — They’re the places you think of when you think of “college” leafy campuses, small classes, small towns. Liberal arts colleges are where students ponder life’s big questions, and learn to think en route to successful careers and richer lives, if not always to the best-paying first jobs.
But today’s increasingly career-focused students mostly aren’t buying the idea that a liberal arts education is good value, and many small liberal arts colleges are struggling. The survivors are shedding their liberal arts identity, if not the label. A study published earlier this year found that of 212 such institutions identified in 1990, only 130 still meet the criteria of a “true liberal arts college.” Most that fell off the list remained in business, but had shifted toward a pre-professional curriculum.
These distinctively American institutions educating at most 2 percent of college students but punching far above their weight in accomplished graduates can’t turn back the clock.
But schools like Adrian College, 75 miles southwest of Detroit and back from a recent near-death experience, offer something of a playbook.
First, get students in the door by offering what they do want, namely sports and extracurricular opportunities that might elude them at bigger schools. Offer vocational subjects like business, criminal justice and exercise science that students and parents think rightly or wrongly will lead to better jobs.
Then, once they’re enrolled, look for other ways to sprinkle the liberal arts magic these colleges still believe in, even if it requires a growing stretch to call yourself a liberal arts college.
“We’re liberal arts-aholics,” says Adrian President Jeffrey Docking, who has added seven sports and two pre-professional degree programs since arriving in 2005 and nearly doubled enrollment to about 1,750.
