Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Welch Suggs
The CASC colleges prided themselves on offering
a low-cost, high-quality educational experience. The 63
founding members (see page 89) had an average annual
operating budget of $274,000 and an average endowment
of $1.2 million. Their average enrollment was 483, which
led to one of the earliest controversies over institutional
membership: the maximum enrollment that should be
allowed at colleges seeking to join CASC. Through the 1950s
and 1960s, the cap went from 500 to 1,000 to 2,000 fulltime
undergraduates before being eliminated altogether in
the late 1980s in favor of a requirement that members must
offer bachelor’s degrees and “demonstrate a commitment
to liberal arts and sciences by such means as requiring for
graduation approximately one-third of all courses taken to be
in those fields.”
The average full-time professor’s salary at CASC
institutions in 1956 was $3,681 and the average president’s
pay was barely $6,000. Both figures trailed national averages
for private colleges, but Hill boasted of the CASC colleges’
ability to keep costs low and educational quality high
for students: “When the question is asked, ‘How do the
small colleges meet the challenge financially’ an honest
and straightforward answer is that they pay low salaries
to dedicated teachers and administrators. They operate in
simple utilitarian plants rather than in luxurious buildings;
they offer programs which can be handled without elaborate
and expensive scientific equipment, and they serve a seriousminded
group of students who do not demand some of
the fashionable luxuries associated with large stadiums and
fraternity life. The result is a simple, low-cost education for
those who want it.”
CASC’s early programs were collectively dubbed
“Operation Bootstrap.” “CASC, as has been emphasized
repeatedly, is not offering a free ride to sightseers,” Hurley
wrote, “but an opportunity for those who want it to help
themselves collectively beyond their means individually.”
To gain accreditation, and perhaps to survive,
the colleges attracted to CASC needed to increase their
1968
Richard P. Saunders
succeeds Hill in January;
he is replaced by Roger
J. Voskuyl (pictured)
in September.
67