Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Small by Design: Resilience in an Era of Mass Higher Education
The small independent colleges in the United States have been remarkable
their broad traditional commitments to collegiate education
and international management. Drury University extended
its traditional liberal arts curriculum to embrace a school
of architecture and half a dozen master’s programs in
professional fields as varied as criminology, communication,
and instructional technology. Goddard College in Vermont
continued its innovative impulses, which go back to the
school’s founding in 1938, with master’s programs in
consciousness studies; nature, culture, and healing; and
transformative language arts. Shenandoah University in
Virginia offered a variety of master’s programs through its
school of health professions and conservatory of music.
Antioch College branched out from its historic
Ohio campus to establish law schools in several metropolitan
areas, characterized by an innovative, public serviceoriented
approach to legal education—a bold move that was
philosophically consistent with an undergraduate curriculum
that emphasized work experience. Some liberal arts
institutions, such as Capital University in Ohio, Chapman
University in California, McKendree College in Illinois,
Mercy College in New York, and Saint Leo University in
Florida, added programs beyond their home campus that
were tailored to nontraditional constituencies, including
working adults and personnel at educationally underserved
locations such as military bases.
Diversity within the group of private colleges has
not precluded cooperation with peer institutions. Since its
chartering in 1962, the Great Lakes Colleges Association
(GLCA) has provided a national model for an effective,
coherent consortium. Its fundamental bond is a commitment
to teaching and learning, as members share expertise and
pool resources and facilities across multiple independent
college campuses, in areas ranging from international
programs to technological innovation. Its members include
12 independent liberal arts colleges in Michigan, Indiana,
and Ohio. In Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota,
a dozen colleges formed the Associated Colleges of the
Midwest at about the same time that the GLCA began.
Nine small colleges and universities in the South
formed their own consortium in 1991, the Associated
Colleges of the South, and soon it had grown to 16 members.
In the multi-state area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia,
West Virginia, and North Carolina, the Appalachian College
Association, incorporated in 1990, now brings together 35
colleges that assist one another and also compete effectively
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