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The strong U.S. tradition of non-profit organizations was born of the key insight that there are social goods that the market cannot, or will not, provide and that government should not provide. Therefore, groups of private citizens, motivated by shared values, interests, and aspirations, are encouraged by public policy to create and sustain organizations to advance the specific causes that reflect their vision and goals.
One of the finest and most globally influential expressions of this American non-profit tradition is the independent sector in higher education. Throughout our national history, groups of individuals have joined together to create and sustain colleges and universities that reflect and express their most dearly held aspirations for their students and communities. Over time these small independent colleges and universities have collectively become essential drivers of educational quality, innovation, and diversity across all of higher education.
Because independent colleges are founded with distinctive and specific missions, they offer an enormous diversity of educational opportunity for students. Among them, students can find, for example, HBCUs and single-sex institutions (and even single-sex HBCUs) and colleges affiliated with any number of denominational or faith traditions. Students can choose work colleges like Berea or the College of the Ozarks, great books colleges like St. John’s in Annapolis and Santa Fe or the Shimer Great Books School at North Central, or colleges that focus on health professions or that have great music conservatories. They can choose colleges with strong co-op programs such as Centre, Reed, or Union. They can choose campuses with lively Greek organizations or powerhouse athletic programs or campuses with none at all. They can find institutions with proud activist and progressive traditions, like Oberlin or Knox, or those with equally proud traditions of conservative commitment, like Grove City.
In short, the independent sector offers students a range of distinctive options that the public sector simply cannot. And as many studies have shown, including several from The Council of Independent Colleges, this distinctiveness and mission focus leads to excellent educational outcomes and inspires intense loyalty — and philanthropy — in graduates. People lucky enough to attend them treasure them and give generously to steward them for new generations of students.
But admittedly, the great majority of Americans didn’t attend a small independent college or send their children to one. And that’s not because, as some might think, independent colleges are too expensive for any but the wealthiest families. In fact, generous financial aid makes independent colleges accessible to students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s just that the sector is composed of institutions that are intentionally small, with distinctive missions rather than mass appeal. So why should we, as a nation, care about whether they continue to thrive?
What’s often overlooked is that independent colleges have improved higher education even for those students — the majority — who do not attend them. As incubators of innovation, independent colleges have developed and advanced educational practices that have been recognized as highly effective and been adopted by institutions of all kinds. Today, from community colleges to research universities, institutions boast study abroad programs, internships and service-learning opportunities, first-year seminars and capstone projects, student-faculty research centers, common reading weeks, and many similar “high impact practices” that have been consistently shown to improve student learning. The fact is that these practices were pioneered and perfected on small, undergraduate-centered, independent campuses, from which they spread to influence and improve undergraduate education for students everywhere. In this way, small independent colleges and universities have shaped our national understanding of what makes for excellence in undergraduate education. At a time when student-centered innovation in higher education is much needed, these independent sites for mission-centered curricular and pedagogical development will continue to contribute new ideas.
Further, around the world, leaders seeking to advance a culture of democracy encourage the establishment of independent, American-style liberal arts colleges. These educational spaces, operating with some degree of freedom from state control, offer students training in evidentiary reasoning, textual analysis, multidisciplinary contextualization, civil debate, historical antecedents, and the lived experience of academic self-governance. These habits of mind develop citizenship, democratic participation, and both professional and civic leadership around the world, just as they have long done here in the U.S.
American higher education needs a strong independent sector. Independent higher education reflects a proud national tradition of private effort for the public good, creates a rich diversity of choice for students, stimulates educational innovation, and transmits a culture of democracy and leadership. This small, ever-challenged, and overperforming sector contributes to the national education ecosystem in powerful ways, and its independence must be protected for the benefits it creates for all of us.
