Allegheny College: President's Office

Small, residential liberal arts colleges are uniquely American institutions that have contributed to making our system of higher education richly diverse and effective. Yet the history of these small colleges, including Allegheny's, is replete with challenges and change. I hope you have a sense of those challenges and of Allegheny's response from this issue of the magazine and earlier communications. Starting with a series of discussions last year, followed by the Summer Working Group's comprehensive report, and continuing now with campus-wide work within the regular committee structure, this has been a remarkable process of institutional self-reflection and collaborative planning.

Outside pressures often are responsible for causing significant institutional change. Indeed, the combination of rising costs, competition for students and increasing financial aid has put budgetary pressures on every sector of higher education. Although the College currently enjoys full enrollments and a balanced budget, projections clearly show this will not continue without our acting now to control expenses and solidify income. Allegheny must be fiscally responsible in order to remain an attractive educational choice both in quality and affordability.

To keep Allegheny affordable for the types of students we take pride in serving, we have continued our commitment to financial assistance and have brought fee increases down to the rate of inflation. This approach maximizes net tuition revenue, when student recruiting, retention and financial aid are all considered. But under our past structure, expenditures would have soon outpaced projected revenue increases -- an unsustainable circumstance that would put the College at risk. Even the most well-endowed colleges are discovering that control of costs is essential to balance the revenue-expense equation. Allegheny has taken important measures in this direction to achieve hard-won savings. There is no denying the need for or the difficulty of setting priorities and making choices, but we have emerged from an open and collaborative process of budget reallocation with real optimism for our future.

Our responsibility is much more than achieving balanced budgets. It is about clarifying and preserving our mission and enduring values as a quality liberal arts college. It is about improving teaching and learning for students in a rapidly changing world. And it is about redoubling our efforts to explain and demonstrate the virtues of a liberal arts education to an increasingly skeptical public. Success with this will improve the income side of the revenue-expense equation -- by attracting and keeping students, by stabilizing tuition revenues and by attracting gifts and grants to support high-quality and innovative offerings.

Allegheny has always been highly dependent on tuition for operating revenues. It is clearly in the best interests of the College and our future students to increase that portion of our operating and capital budgets supported by gifts and grants. To remain in that distinguished group of small colleges committed to the liberal arts, Allegheny must increasingly capture the imagination and excitement of those who can be convinced that we are a place worthy of their philanthropy. The Allegheny we know would not have been possible without benefit of those whose gifts created endowed scholarships and professorships or made facilities possible (including the recent Doane Hall of Chemistry and the Wise Sport & Fitness Center).

We are setting about to further distinguish Allegheny from the myriad choices students have and to more convincingly illustrate the value of our education to students and parents. The clear-headed analysis and ideas that are emerging from our planning process promise to advance our liberal arts approach as they respond to important student needs and expectations. Our emphasis on learning enhancement in the use of information technologies, on application and integration of knowledge in real-world settings of work and service, and on improving the transition to demanding college work are illustrations of initiatives that will attract and educate students.

Allegheny has taken important and forward-looking steps to help it shape its own future rather than let circumstances shape it. The creative ideas we are developing more fully this year will advance our mission and support our values, although they will change the face of Allegheny in some ways. Curricula, disciplines, and organizational structures have changed continually over Allegheny's history -- one need only to look at College bulletins over the years to sense how dramatically. What has not and will not change is our emphasis on a broad-based education, intellectual growth, life-long learning and the special nature of the faculty-student relationship. Many colleges have been reluctant to attempt cost control simultaneously with program development, despite the need. I am pleased that Allegheny has had the courage and foresight to do so in a logical and collaborative manner. I know that you will continue to be our important partners in this worthy endeavor.