<p>I think the point that siusplau and I are trying to make is in regards to your comparisons of colleges, college experiences and spending per student. For true consortiums, like Claremont and the Bi-co, students don’t see boundaries and the resources of one school are fluid with those of the others. When you make your college comparisons, you seem to be artificially putting each college into a separate box which, when dealing with consortiums, doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation for students. Saying that kids who go to CMC don’t have the same academic opportunities as Swat is a little misleading because they do. The difference, however, is that they may have to skateboard an extra 2 minutes in the California sun to get there or, in the bi-co’s case, take a funky 10 minute bus ride. Either way, a class taken on another campus is still a class taken. And from my and siuplau’s experience, the consortium arrangement of the bi-co and the Claremont may actually provide greater opportunities when compared to a school that doesn’t enjoy a real consortium arrangement despite endowment size. </p>
<p>Regarding the library issue with the tri-college, the Swat perspective you give is one. I am giving you the perspective from the Bi-co. BMC’s and HC’s libraries are a little smaller than Swat’s but, like I said with many other resources, together their capacity and breadth of holdings is equal in most fields and sometimes greater. When thinking about a HC or BMC experience, you have to consider the other college. Books requested often arrive same-day or kids just pick them up before/after a class they may be taking on the other campus… there are about 4 thousand cross-registrations each year. Because of this, there is also significant discussion in the Bi-co as well, but the debate is whether the Bi-co should merge ITS resources with Swat. </p>
<p>The main reason why the colleges partner like this, in my opinion, is because it formalizes and lays concrete the relationship between Swat and the bi-co… another sentence to include in the admissions glossy, summer tri-co, the Peace Studies consortium, and, because all 3 schools share a common Quaker history and Philly location, it just makes sense on paper and is a way to distinguish a shared cultural history and “brand” when compared to other NE colleges… even though it doesn’t really impact most Swat and Bi-co kids either way.</p>