Liberal arts colleges are some of wealthy Americans favorite institutions. Parents send their children to schools the size of most high schools with millions of dollars allocated to each individual student, with few graduate programs (rarely doctoral) and research initiatives absorbing tuition money. Amongst leftists, liberal arts colleges intellectual curriculums and left-wing political affiliations are the epitome of intellectual learning over pre-professional.
There are many advantages to attending a school such as Williams College, with an endowment of over $3.5 billion and barely 2,000 students: your child will likely receive a more personalized academic experience and have greater access to their professors. Because of the few number of graduate students or other university ventures than the undergraduate college, undergraduates also get the attention of their university. Here at Hopkins, professors often have other priorities, like research and mentoring doctoral students.
While the existence of these liberal arts colleges may be a good intellectual activity for a small number of students, they are a terrible trade off for the United States as society and are the paragon of elitist institutions.
Liberal arts colleges attract one primary archetype: white and wealthy. Diversity at these colleges is not as profound as at large research universities. Tuition costs are nearly even but name recognition of even the 5 best-ranked liberal arts colleges (Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and Pomona) is not as notable as the Ivy League or its peers. Why then do many wealthy parents send their children there?
The reason is that these parents may believe that their children will receive more attention at such colleges, where student sizes are small but endowment per student is inflated. The 5 liberal arts colleges I mentioned above have a combined endowment of over $15 billion but less than 10,000 undergraduate students. I can’t think of anything more oligarchical than concentrating a million dollars per student into a population originating from the top 1%.
When looking at endowment value-per-student, the top performers are not liberal arts colleges, but rather elite research institutions, such as Harvard University and Massachusetts of Technology. Yet, there is a difference in how this wealth is utilized. Liberal arts college faculty are often trading off research time for teaching with teaching/research splits ranging from 100/0 to 50/50. While wealthy private institutions like Harvard and Hopkins have bloated endowments that need to be criticized, these universities are centers of research in the United States, where cancer therapeutics are being discovered, new methods of sustainability are being researched, and more.
Further, stereotypical liberal arts colleges are often located in smaller northeastern towns, with four out of the five colleges listed earlier being in rural and secluded towns. Many large research universities are located in large cities, such as University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Columbia University in New York City. While these universities are not the pinnacle of diversity, their location allows students to learn about diverse experiences in the city around them. Smaller northeastern towns confine students, most of whom are already extremely white and wealthy, to echo chambers of experience and culture.
I don’t believe Harvard should have an endowment worth more than $50 billion but I feel comfortable saying that Harvard had made investments in the world outside of the Harvard ecosystem. This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine went to a Harvard physician who discovered microRNA, a finding that has countless therapeutic applications and will contribute to saving lives. I would spend billions on discoveries like that alone: these research universities additionally, fund other programs such as Jhpiego, a Johns Hopkins affiliated non-profit that focuses on improving global health, and Project ECHO, an initiative at the University of New Mexico that has connected people in communities across the globe to world class medical care through telehealth.
Liberal arts colleges aren’t doing this kind of work. Liberal arts colleges do not have robust research environments, if they have research environments at all, and instead channel their entire institutional mission into undergraduate education, primarily for the wealthy.
Hopkins runs a multi-billion dollar hospital complex that has made mistakes but treats millions of patients with extremely complicated, often life-threatening, disorders. Liberal arts colleges do not have a mechanism of using their funds for community upliftment, with no hospital complexes, productive physics laboratories, policy think tanks, etc. Although schools like Williams do have labs in fields like physics, their research output is virtually nonexistent.
Universities are centers of scholarly activity not solely because of their education but because of their creation of new knowledge. Professors are not solely educators but also experts who dedicate their careers to discovering and making an impact.
Of course, there is value in reading Chaucer as a mathematics major or learning calculus as a history major, and the ideals taught by the liberal arts are important. Still, it is often not practical for students, especially those from poorer backgrounds, to engage in academia simply for the sake of learning. Learning should not be treated simply as an intellectual exercise and the applications of learning science or literature must be emphasized in the form of research, technology, and art.
Private universities such as Hopkins receive hefty criticism for their wealth while liberal arts colleges often fly under their radar despite their plentiful financial capital, most having more than doubled their endowments since 2007. Liberal arts colleges are evidence that America’s wealth gap is deeply entrenched in our educational model. Liberals praising these colleges should remember their own ideals of economic prosperity for all and communal resources. Ultimately, liberal arts colleges are an amazing place to get your education but terrible institutions within their communities.
Neil Mahto is a sophomore from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He currently serves as the Opinions editor of the News-Letter.
