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Author Breneman, David W.

Title Liberal arts colleges : thriving, surviving, or endangered? / David W. Breneman.

Publication Info. Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution, [1994]
©1994

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 University of Saint Joseph: Pope Pius XII Library - Standard Shelving Location  378.04 B837L    Check Shelf
Description xi, 184 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents A brief financial history -- Enrollment, tuition, and financial aid -- Trends in revenue and expenditure -- Site visits -- The future -- Appendixes -- Tables -- Figures.
Summary Private liberal arts colleges are among the oldest of American institutions. Yet their history has been surrounded by concern about their ability to survive. Some see these small colleges as increasingly irrelevant in a world marked by growing demand for technical training. Others wonder how private colleges, many with few students and high tuitions, can compete successfully against heavily subsidized public colleges and universities.
David Breneman, an economist and former college president, confronts the renewed concern about the future of liberal arts colleges. He explains that as higher education emerged from the relatively expansive years of the 1980s into the economically distressed 1990s, many college administrators faced - and continue to face - great uncertainty about enrollment and funding. Can these small, labor-intensive colleges thrive, or will they wither?
Will families be able - and willing - to pay the costs required for this type of education? Will the drift toward technical and professional studies doom colleges devoted to seemingly less practical study of the arts and sciences.
In this book, Breneman explores these and many other educational and economic issues. He provides a detailed analysis of more than 200 liberal arts colleges and describes the recent financial and curricular history of many of these schools. He explains how they have survived and how many have prospered despite severe competitive pressures.
Breneman shows why the universe of liberal arts colleges - which includes such members as women's colleges, black colleges, religiously affiliated colleges, and highly selective colleges - have had diverse experiences and confront different futures.
Liberal Arts Colleges includes sketches of twelve colleges that provide insight into both the shared and distinctive concerns of a varied but representative set of liberal arts colleges. The author weaves these specific cases into a final chapter on the prospects for liberal arts colleges and concludes that some colleges are thriving, most colleges have survived, and only a few are endangered.
Subject Private universities and colleges -- United States -- Finance.
Education, Humanistic -- Economic aspects -- United States.
Education, Humanistic -- Economic aspects. (OCoLC)fst00903139
Private universities and colleges -- Finance. (OCoLC)fst01077632
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Geisteswissenschaften. (DE-588)4019838-8
Bildungsökonomie. (DE-588)4006664-2
College. (DE-588)4148217-7
United States.
Educación humanística -- Aspectos económicos -- United States.
Indexed Term Education, Humanistic Economic aspects United States
Private universities and colleges United States Finance
Other Form: Online version: Breneman, David W. Liberal arts colleges. Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution, ©1994 (OCoLC)621824155
ISBN 0815710623 (alk. paper)
9780815710622 (alk. paper)
0815710615 (paperback; alk. paper)
9780815710615 (paperback; alk. paper)
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