Here's an article in today's Inside Higher Ed on the demise of liberal arts colleges. According to research by economist, David Breneman:
212 liberal arts colleges identified [by Breneman] in 1990 have now decreased to 137. Many former liberal arts colleges are evolving, consciously or unconsciously, into more academically complex institutions offering numerous vocational as well as arts and science majors. In the process, they may have lost the focused mission and carefully integrated academic program that for generations made small liberal arts colleges a model of quality undergraduate education. Most likely this trend will persist.
To address this trend, the author of the article, Roger Baldwin, calls for external support for careful study of the problem and greater funding for "entrepreneurial educational programs that preserve the best aspects of the liberal arts college model." Here's one successful college president's call for reform of the liberal arts model.
My own view is that a lot of the decline is inevitable and can be explained by demographic trends and economic forces working against private liberal arts schools. In Georgia, for example, liberal arts colleges must compete against state alternatives that price their product at zero for any student with a B or better average
Add relevance (i.e., liberal arts colleges have difficulty "selling" the purpose of liberal arts education to parents) and politicization (i.e., liberal education is Liberal education) problems to the mix, and we get the current result.
