Texas Ed Spectator

From my basic list of liberal arts colleges

I love Albion’s “Prospective Student” page. It starts with “do you believe that your first 18 years of life can be accurately and completely reflected in one admissions applications?” Well, of course not which is why you should visit Albion. Like most small, liberal arts colleges, it’s faculty gets high marks for quality and interaction. It appears to have some interesting academic programs and has a high percentage of students going to graduate school or med school after graduation.

The Princeton Review has Albion ranked as number ten in terms of Least Happy Students which may have something to do with being number seven in More to Do on Campus. If the students are as sheltered suburbanites as suggested, it could explain why they might not find the small town of Albion very entertaining. About a third of students are part of the Greek community and comments on StudentsReview suggest that the campus is very clique-ish. Given the nature of small schools, it’s probably a good idea to make sure Albion’s social scene will work for you.

• Four Year Graduation Rate: 66.9%
• Median SAT: 1125
• 15,035 expenditures per student
• 81.9% Admitted
• Princeton Review reports 38% going to graduate school and 15% to medical school
• US News and World Reports lists an endowment of $174,464,242

The Good:

There appears to be a lot of social activities on campus and there is very little on campus crime reported. The college has made a commitment to academic excellence in its First Year Program and numerous academic opportunities.

Entertainment

The Coffee House is a nonprofit student organization which provides Albion College and the Albion community with social space in the hopes of fostering greater social and intellectual exchange. The Coffee House serves the entire gamut of Coffee House fare–espresso, cappuccino, hot chocolate, mochas, soda, etc.–and provides frequent entertainment and lively discussion. Furthermore, the Coffee House provides student volunteers with the opportunity to manage a small business first hand.

Albion College First-Year Experience

William Atwell Brown, Jr., and Mary Brown Vacin First-Year Experience (FYE)

The FYE program will enable you to make a smooth and positive transition to Albion College. Through the program you will be introduced to the liberal arts tradition and the rigors of academic excellence. The FYE program will help you establish habits of mind and patterns of decision-making that will ensure achieving optimal success throughout your four years here. We think you’ll find the First-Year Experience will meet you where you are and take you where you want to go.

Albion College First-Year Experience

Digital Portfolios

Your Digital Portfolio, which provides a detailed summary highlighting your academic and extracurricular experiences.

Albion College Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (FURSCA) was established to promote and support student research, original scholarship and creative efforts in all disciplines. Through a number of programs, taking place at all points in a student’s career at Albion, FURSCA can help students pursue independent study in their areas of interest. Students work closely with a faculty mentor to develop and carry out research or other creative projects

Flags:

Albion’s budget cuts are coming after being highlighted by the Wall Street Journal for it’s questionable statistics in alumni donations.

Trustees propose budget cut

At 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 12, a meeting was held between faculty committee chairs and Board of Trustee members to discuss a recent proposal by the board to cut four tenure-track faculty members to help reduce the college’s deficit.

…

Next year, the school will assume additional operating expenses of about $1.2 million. VanAken said that the largest piece of this is $850,000 in depreciation for the science complex. To help make up for these new expenses, VanAken and the administration have the goal of recruiting 525 first-year students, 45 more than this year’s 480. The extra students would increase the college’s enrollment closer to last year’s 1,950 students. Looking at enrollment a few years ahead, the college will need to recruit classes to replace the class of 2008 that came in with 559 students and the class of 2009 that came in with 571 students, an important thing to be noted, according to VanAken.

WSJ.com

Albion

College, 90 miles west of Detroit in Albion, Mich., used this tactic to increase its alumni giving rate beginning in 2003, when it reaped an artificial increase of 1.4 percentage points, to 51.6%. The college boasted of the rate in a grant application; ultimately, it was awarded the $4.65 million in funds. Albion President Peter Mitchell says the school stopped using this method for the class of 2007 and that the giving rate was just “one arrow in the quiver” for the grant.

Albion stats called into question

On March 2, Albion received attention on the national level, serving as the featured school in a “Wall Street Journal” article. Many students and faculty were dismayed to find, however, the attention was not positive.The article, entitled “To Boost Donor Numbers, Colleges Adopt New Tricks,” addressed how several colleges calculate their alumni-giving rate. Albion was used to illustrate all of the practices called into question in the article, which included limited effort to find alumni that do not have current contact information on file and the practice of considering senior gifts as multi-year donations.

I also have some concerns about the strength of its liberal arts program. I know that Albion has several programs that are design to integrate the liberal arts into management, medicine, and administration but given its five most popular majors, I would look into the emphasis of the academic programs very carefully.

USNews.com: America’s Best Colleges 2008: Albion College: Academics

Albion: 20% economics, 13% biology/biological sciences, 12% psychology, 11% English language and literature, 10% history

St. Olaf: 11% biology/biological sciences, 8% English language and literature, 6% economics, 6% mathematics, 6% psychology

College of Wooster: 10% history, 9% psychology, 8% English language and literature, 8% communication studies/speech communication and rhetoric, 8% political science and government

Kalamazoo: 24% social sciences, 13% psychology, 10% English language and literature/letters, 9% biological and biomedical sciences, 9% physical sciences

Wabash: 14% history, 13% psychology, 12% English language and literature, 11% philosophy and religious studies, 10% biology/biological sciences

College Navigator - Albion College

Majors in Business, management, marketing, and related support services 41%

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