Ohio
Liberal arts colleges hold a special place in American higher education because of their focus on undergraduates, and, like several other midwestern states, Ohio has a strong heritage in this field. We visited four colleges and universities within a short drive of downtown Cleveland. Enrollment ranged from a few hundred students to 3,000 plus, but it was the diversity of what they had to offer that stood out.:
John Carroll University
More than 70 percent of students at John Carroll University identify themselves as Roman Catholic, and the 60-acre campus, about 10 miles outside Cleveland, is what one would expect from a Catholic college. There are imposing Gothic buildings, a standard quad, and the requisite student facilities and sports complex. It's a quiet campus and one that students are encouraged to think beyond. "We teach students about themselves, but that's not something that can be fully realized until they put their learning into practice in the world," says Robert Niehoff, the Jesuit who serves as president.
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Baldwin-Wallace College
Baldwin's ideas about inclusive and personalized education find their modern incarnation at Baldwin-Wallace College (the hyphen stems from a 1913 merger). Classes are small—about 15 students per professor. "It can be a touchy-feely type of place, which many students find very valuable," says economics Prof. Robert Ebert. "Others don't want that all the time." Many professors stay in touch even after graduation, students say, and one effect of that close-knit culture is to counter the ever increasing influence of overinvolved parents and encourage academic risk-taking. An unusually high number of students are parents themselves: In addition to more than 1,000 adult learners who take classes there, many students bring their families to campus. The school provides child care and housing, in some cases, for students with children.
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Oberlin College
Perhaps no other school exemplifies the liberal arts like Oberlin College. It's a bastion of liberal thought, of course, and home to one of the country's best music conservatories. But there's actual art on campus, too, from the colorful chairs in the library to the original Picassos or Jackson Pollocks that the art museum lends to students to hang in their dorm rooms.
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Lake Erie College
Lake Erie College was withering on the vine less than a decade ago. The school of several hundred students went coed in the 1980s, but enrollment was lackluster and the college was failing to define itself amid the legion of other small liberal arts schools on the buckle of the rust belt. It was once so elitist that the school, in Painesville, Ohio, had its own yacht, and the women who attended were barred from dating local men, a rule that was axed only in the 1970s. Lake Erie, says President Michael Victor, had lost its sense of institutional mission.
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