Admissions and financial aid policies at liberal arts colleges have
changed dramatically since 1955. Through the 1950s, most colleges in the
United States enrolled fewer than 1000 students, nearly all of whom were
white. Few colleges were truly selective in their admissions; they
accepted most students who applied. In the 1960s, as the children of the
baby boom reached college age and both federal and institutional
financial aid programs expanded, many more students began to apply to
college. For the first time, liberal arts colleges were faced with an
abundance of applicants, which raised new questions. What criteria would
they use to select students? How would they award financial aid? The
answers to these questions were shaped by financial and educational
considerations as well as by the struggles for civil rights and gender
equality that swept across the nation. The colleges' answers also proved
crucial to their futures, as the years since the mid-1970s have shown.
When the influx of baby boom students slowed, colleges began to recruit
aggressively in order to maintain their class sizes. In the past decade,
financial aid has become another tool that colleges use to compete for
the best students.
By tracing the development of competitive admission and financial aid
policies at a selected group of liberal arts colleges, Crafting a
Class explores how institutional decisions reflect and respond to broad
demographic, economic, political, and social forces. Elizabeth Duffy and
Idana Goldberg closely studied sixteen liberal arts colleges in
Massachusetts and Ohio. At each college, they not only collected
empirical data on admissions, enrollment, and financial aid trends, but
they also examined archival materials and interviewed current and former
administrators. Duffy and Goldberg have produced an authoritative and
highly readable account of some of the most important changes that have
taken place in American higher education during the tumultuous decades
since the mid-1950s. Crafting a Class will interest all readers who
are concerned with the past and future directions of higher education in
the United States.
Originally published in 1997.
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