When you’ve got a target on your back, you can run and hide—or you can commission a study. A group of liberal-arts colleges chose to do the latter, and now their leaders are trumpeting the results.
Last week the Annapolis Group, which represents 130 private liberal-arts colleges, released the findings of a national survey of college graduates. Alumni of Annapolis Group colleges, the survey found, reported the highest level of satisfaction with their undergraduate experience. Seventy-seven percent rated it as “excellent,” compared with 59 percent of graduates of private colleges and 56 percent of graduates of top-ranked public universities.
Alumni of Annapolis Group colleges were more likely than graduates of other institutions to say that their alma mater had prepared them for their first job, as well as for life after college. They were also more likely to say that they had found a mentor in college, been challenged by a professor, and experienced a sense of community.
The survey, conducted by Hardwick Day, a higher-education consulting firm, was based on telephone interviews of 2,700 college graduates who earned degrees from one of four groups of four-year institutions: private residential liberal-arts colleges, represented by the Annapolis Group; private colleges; “top 50" public universities (as rated by U.S. News & World Report); and national public flagship universities. Respondents graduated between 1995 and 2006, and were interviewed in 2002 and again in 2011.
In the vast realm of skeptics, some people will question this survey, if only because its findings reflect outrageously well upon the very institutions that commissioned it. Or because they think the residential model is dated, bloated, and too expensive. Or because they’ve got a degree from a liberal-arts college, five-figure debt, and no job.
Yet this research—and the decision to conduct it—suggests the ways in which the dynamics of college recruitment are changing. These days, many admissions deans say they aren’t just selling their own institutions to prospective students anymore; they’re also selling the very idea of attending college.
In the case of the liberal-arts institutions, this means banding together to articulate what they do—and why—as more and more of their applicants are also applying to public universities and other types of institutions, and as many families worry about the practical value of degrees. “Differentiation” has long been a golden word in recruitment. But it’s become an even greater necessity for liberal-arts colleges ever since the economy tanked, and the second-guessing of long-held assumptions—such as that students learn best when immersed day and night in a community of learning—has become fashionable.
Philip A. Glotzbach, president of Skidmore College and chairman of the Annapolis Group’s executive committee, described the survey as an attempt to define value at a time when pundits and parents alike are questioning the usefulness of college degrees, especially those that come from liberal-arts colleges with hefty price tags: “We feel the need to make the case for our sector because it’s so easy for others to paint us with this broad brush.”
Making the case for that sector also means providing Annapolis Group colleges with statistics that they can use in their marketing materials (something at least a few institutions are already planning to do). In a data-driven world, consumers crave numbers when assessing value, especially when looking at colleges that are known to induce serious cases of sticker shock.
For some families, even the most glowing numbers on student success and satisfaction won’t matter as much the ones that come after the dollar sign, however. And those numbers aren’t going down. Within a few years, more and more liberal-arts colleges will be pushing the $60,000- or $70,000-a-year barrier, Mr. Glotzbach predicted. “Our costs will continue to go up,” he said, “there’s just no escaping it.”
Mr. Glotzbach’s remarks came during a chat with education reporters here last week that was part briefing, part pep rally. He was joined by the presidents of Kenyon and Washington & Jefferson Colleges and of the College of Saint Benedict.
They hoped the findings would affirm that not all colleges are the same, a lost point in many debates. “There’s been a conflation of the notion of ‘college’ that obscures for the public the ability to see differences among different kinds of colleges,” said Tori Haring-Smith, president of Washington & Jefferson.
I asked James H. Day, a principal at Hardwick Day and director of the survey, if there were specific characteristics of students who choose to attend liberal-arts colleges that might explain some of the survey’s results, such as that 87 percent of Annapolis Group alumni graduated in four years, compared with 51 percent of alumni of public flagships. Do some findings say more about students at liberal-arts colleges than about those colleges?
While some students are a better fit for liberal-arts colleges than others, Mr. Day said, “inputs” alone do not explain the survey’s results. He described the findings as proof that liberal-arts colleges do something to students (“transform them,” said one president) after they enroll.
Perhaps that’s why the debate over liberal-arts colleges—which serve only a small fraction of college students—seems like a big deal. These institutions offer, or at least promise, a distilled form of what admissions officers at much larger institutions think many students still want.
Even when touring Big Ol’ U, you’re likely to see evidence of this. Have you heard, the tour guide will ask, about our small class sizes? Did you know that many of our courses are still taught by professors? Did we mention our cocurricular activities?
As critics continue to question the future of residential liberal-arts colleges, it’s only fair to consider what graduates see when they look back at their experiences. “Do they think this is all in vain?” Mr. Day said of the residential liberal-arts model. “Do they think this is just silliness and an erosion of their time? The answer is no.”
At least, that’s what the survey says.
