Aug 11, 2009

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


No comments:

Post a Comment