Throughstone #4: The Best Colleges I've Seen

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I’ve witnessed too many of these wakes. The news always seems to come at the end of  day, with the whispers and outrage surging through the far-flung college community overnight. Yesterday, yet another bell tolled for one of our most innovative models of education in the US – born and bred in the tiny hamlet of Craftsbury, Vermont – when Sterling College announced the cessation of its degree programs following next spring’s semester. 

As a student and an educator, I’ve always preferred the outer edges of higher education, where the view is better and the adrenaline surges. The middle is a muddle, with too many checklists and too few opportunities for self actualization and deep civic engagement. Nothing against those institutions or those who reaped the best they have to offer. I just worry that those large institutions have seldom been the leaders in creative pedagogy, especially when it comes to the exploration of values. Instead, the behemoths have imitated what they’ve seen our tiny giants do. 

It’s the small, nimble, and values-centered colleges that have almost always been the beacons of change, not just for inspiring curricula and scholarship, but also for how to foster community. 

Sadly, these losses negatively impact rural communities disproportionately. Small colleges aren’t just economic catalysts – they also serve as outposts of culture and knowledge, while bringing in youthful vitality. I’ve now seen my alma mater and two of my academic employers close their doors. Now we find ourselves innovating once again – toward a more resilient model.

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I wrote about the closure of my alma mater, St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, NC, and my academic home of 23 years, Green Mountain College in Poultney, VT here:

https://www.freerangeprof.com/blog/a-requiem-for-things-that-don-t-die 

“Throughstone 250” is a purposefully constrained blog project. As a long-winded Southerner constrained by Vermont’s limited porch season and the Yankee penchant for paragraphs of three words or less, I’ve opted to aim for semi-daily reflections of precisely 250 words for the foreseeable future.

250 means something right now. Maybe more than we anticipated. It’s symbolic but incredibly important…and a 250 word count seems much less constrained than a 5-7-5 syllable count for a haiku. 

Like many others, I’m struggling to make meaning out of these tumultuous days. I’ve always found it useful to try and write my way out of tough spots. Looking for throughstones is just one more effort to try and generate some meaning from the mayhem.