In a state where higher education is dominated by flagships and football, Southwestern University is a bit of an outlier. Just about 30 minutes away from the University of Texas at Austin, it has only 1,300 students, all of them undergraduates. Football there is intramural—and flag.
Nonprofit colleges in financial trouble have options other than merging, shutting down, or, as was the case for institutions like the College of Santa Fe and Daniel Webster, Kendall, and Waldorf Colleges, selling themselves to for-profit higher-education companies.
The company's foundation aims to help first-generation students graduate in two ways: through small private colleges and via minority-serving institutions.
Laura L. Anglin, president of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, in New York, describes the budget troubles facing New York's private institutions—and makes the case for how those institutions can bolster the state's economic competitiveness.