Small Campuses

It turns out that the competition for the nation’s smallest colleges and universities is a little complicated and probably not really worth pursuing except as a counterbalance to the previous post. According to the US Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there are 424 colleges offering 4-year bachelor’s degrees with total undergraduate enrollment under 300 students. This count includes for profit as well as not-for-profit schools. It also includes an impressive assortment of religious institutions and very specific professional schools.

Perhaps the most famous of the ridiculously-small colleges is Deep Springs, with only 26 male students. Established in 1917 as an educational experiment, Deep Springs is located on a remote ranch in California and enrolls some very very smart young men many of whom eventually move on to the most elite colleges and universities in the nation after spending two years milking cows and discussing Heidegger. Readers of the latest entry in the “admit lit” market, Acceptance by David Marcus, will recognize Deep Springs as the destination school for one of the seven kids counseled by Gwyeth Smith, recently retired from Oyster Bay High School in New York. It’s clearly not an easy school to get into.

With no particular intent beyond simple curiosity, I offer the following list of micro colleges:

College	Location	Size
Deep Springs	Deep Springs CA	26
American Indian College of the Assemblies of God	Phoenix AZ	50
Webb Institute	Glen Cove NY	90
Shimer College	Chicago IL	91
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts	Merrimack NH	98
Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science	Cincinnati OH	100
Beacon College	Leesburg FL	117
The Curtis Institute of Music	Philadelphia PA	132
Art Academy of Cincinnati	Cincinnati OH	141
VanderCook College of Music	Chicago IL	174
College of Visual Arts	St. Paul MN	178
Burlington College	Burlington VT	179
San Francisco Conservatory of Music	San Francisco, CA	200
Cleveland Institute of Music	Cleveland OH	223
Virginia Intermont College	Bristol VA	224
Chester College of New England	Chester NH	227
Cogswell Polytechnical College	Sunnyvale CA	230
Goddard College	Plainfield VT	247
College of St. Joseph	Rutland VT	261
Montserrat College of Art	Beverly MA	285
Memphis College of Art	Memphis TN	286
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering	Needham MA	299
Judson College	Marion AL	312
College of the Atlantic	Bar Harbor ME	312