Commentary on Higher Education Financing
Liberal-arts colleges now find themselves in a brutal competition to attract a certain kind of paying student. By and large, students are not moneymakers for the college if they are poor enough to qualify for need-based aid, pedigreed enough to command major scholarship offers, or a minority who must be lured, with a nice tuition discount, to a place like Crawfordsville, Indiana. In short, white mediocrity is the bread and butter of the contemporary liberal-arts college.
But in order for the formula to work, these colleges must have a critical mass of students. There have to be enough profit-generating students to allow the college to take a loss on the students who will boost selectivity™ and diversity™. This is why Simon Newman wants to increase enrollment at MSMU and why college presidents everywhere lose sleep over enrollment numbers. These pressures are not unique to liberal-arts colleges, just more acute because of their relatively small size and their already inflated tuition.
