[Alumni-chat] FW: questioning basic principles?

[Mark Pomerantz]

Antioch College's decline is a complex mixture of the overall decline in the
"small liberal arts college" market and the number of boomers going to
college, the decreased financial support for colleges by the Nixon and
subsequent administrations, changing educational priorities of students and
their parents, the strike, bad press, bad management-resulting in the
massive physical decline of the college, and other problems. 

Guskin patched a viable university system together-for awhile. As long
anyway, as the BOT respected his vision of the importance of the college in
the university system. Not that it was paramount or first among equals but
that it should be subsidized when necessary. This vision has obviously been
at the least very heavily diluted by the current AU administration. 

And of course there was the "Renewal Plan." A lot of colleges and
universities have established "learning communities" in recent years. In
large research universities residential learning communities attempt to
replicate the ethos of a liberal arts college with varying success. When
learning communities are established in liberal arts colleges it is usually
to restore or make liberal arts education more viable when that education is
vulnerable. This was the case at Antioch-the idea being to attract more
students, increase the retention rate, and stabilize or cut costs through
team teaching interdisciplinary "courses" with higher student-faculty
ratios.

The question is why was it such a massive failure when it has worked well
elsewhere?  Perhaps the students at Antioch are more rebellious than at
other colleges? Do you think?

Mark P. '71

-----Original Message---- 
From: alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu
[mailto:alumni-chat-bounces at w3.antioch.edu] On Behalf Of t Sanford
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:22 PM
To: alumni-chat at w3.antioch.edu; Organizers at antiochians.org
Subject: [Alumni-chat] FW: questioning basic principles?





jim, i will do the research tomorrow but i have this bug in my brain that
says there are at least ten slarc's with less than 1000 students. At the
1000 student level and above we need only look at my home town favorite
Reed. Reed has approximately 1200 students (a number that has been in
decline for several years) a students "pay" a mere 60% of what the education
would actually cost and this is a student body whose parents have
substantial assets on the whole (in my short time there my housemates
included the blacksheep son of a major food conglomerate, an ambassador's
son and the son of a member of the US Senate whose family had more than one
senator in their line. I briefly dated (but alas did not capture the heart
of) a mail order marketing heiress). The tuition at Harvard, though very
high, does not cover the actual cost of educating the undergraduate student
body, again, it is the wealth of the endowment, not enrollment that ends up
making a college selective.  My comment about the simplistic nature of your
question is that this board and this alumni body have gone around and around
for nine months on the issue. We believe, still that no other institution
offers what Antioch does even in its enfeebeled state. That it can recover
is bourne out by the numbers of information requests admissions get every
year. The problem has been conversion. Our facilities are perhaps the worst
in higher ed (short of the University of DC) but we still have 300 students
who are willing to pony up every last asset their parents posses to meet our
shcokingly jogh tuition! That means the market exists but only the diehards
are coming. If we can move to a place where capital improvements does not
equal deferred maintainece our numbers would go up. If you think this is a
question of the chicken or the egg, I would suggest that it can not be shown
that the definitive downturn in Antioch's financial position was tied to
declining standards of enrollment or graduation but rather in the general
down turn in the US economy circa 1974 and the stock market crash of 2001.
Also, as I posted long ago, Antioch's decline in enrollement has been less
than the decline in the college age population so it is not a question of a
shrinking demographic. travis
 


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