Bleak future of Liberal Arts Colleges?

[Corbett]

Why do you say that LACs “are generally not the best at STEM”? It’s true that LACs aren’t known for cutting-edge STEM research. However, they can be extremely good at undergraduate-level STEM education. For example, take a look at NSF’s recent list of “Top 50 Schools by Per-Capita Engineering & Science PhD Production”.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-50-schools-that-produce-science-phds/

A majority of the schools on this list are LACs. As the news story points out:

Students who attend liberal arts colleges enjoy many advantages that students at large public and private universities often don’t. At liberal arts colleges, there is typically a far greater chance for undergraduate research. Classes are routinely small. Instead of hundreds in a lower-division science class, you may have 15 or 20 students. Students at colleges enjoy more of a chance to form connections with teachers because the learning doesn’t take place in lecture halls. What’s more, it’s the professors who ultimately write those graduate school recommendations.

The strong performance of LACs is even more impressive considering that the list includes Engineering, which most of the listed LACs don’t offer. If this was a list of “Top 50 Schools by Per-Capita Science PhD Production” (excluding engineering), LACs would perform even more strongly.

The future may be bleak for private colleges that are undistinguished in terms of having anything that would attract enough students and parents to pay a premium for them over less expensive options (e.g. in-state public colleges).

I would agree that less selective LACs, which charge high tuition but which don’t offer high prestige, may face hard times in the future. However, this will be true for any private institution, whether it is a LAC or a large university.