of the best full-time teacher-scholars in the world—not teaching assistants just learning the
ropes or adjuncts dividing their time between schools. And we must support our professors
with state-of-the-art facilities and the most up-to-date technology: computers, “smart” class-
rooms, electron microscopes, 3-D printers.
We are defined by our understanding that students are not passive, empty vessels into
which professors simply pour their wisdom. We know that teaching and learning are most
successful when they are highly interactive: when professors engage their students as indi-
viduals and encourage them to ask questions and create their own solutions to important
problems.
When I was teaching, I could tell immediately whether my students were connecting
with our discussions, and I could often anticipate their questions. I knew them as individ-
uals, and those relationships enabled me to tailor what we were doing in the classroom to
what they needed at a given moment. It wasn’t a one-way lecture that could be captured,
canned, and televised. It was a genuine conversation in which my students and I both
changed our thinking. Skidmore professors teach in precisely this way.
Teaching the way we teach is a choice, of course, and there are less expensive alterna-
tives. But our focus, our mission, is to offer the best possible undergraduate education. Pe-
riod. It’s an expensive proposition, but there are no shortcuts to excellence.
WHY DOES IT COST SO MUCH TO ED-
UCATE A SKIDMORE STUDENT?
•••
PROVIDING THE HIGHEST-QUALITY LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
IS A VERY EXPENSIVE PROPOSITION.
No one has yet found a cheap way
to provide the personalized, high-touch opportunities we offer to our students. And re-
member that the “sticker price” of a college education never reflects its full cost. On av-
erage, we spend nearly 20 percent more on each student than we charge, with that 20
percent coming from the endowment and fundraising.
What we do at Skidmore is highly labor-intensive. You just can’t teach the way we do if
you routinely have 100 or even 50 students in a class. And you can’t do it electronically. On-
line courses have their place both in the world at large and at Skidmore, and we are explor-
ing how best to take advantage of the opportunities they represent to enhance our students’
educational experiences. But the core of what we offer requires personal interactions be-
tween real people in real time. It happens in the classroom, the studio, the lab, and also in
residence halls, in the dining hall, and on the athletic field. Through these interactions, we
challenge our students to think imaginatively about the subjects they are studying, about
themselves as they develop, and about the world around them.
Certainly, we must find ways to contain costs. We ask ourselves constantly how to be
as strategic and efficient as possible in directing our resources. But the more important
question is about value: How do investments in education help us to achieve our aspira-
tions—as individuals and as a nation? How can we assure that our graduates use their Skid-
more experiences to help solve the world’s problems?
The answer is extraordinary teaching. It requires the strongest possible faculty—some
our mission is to offer the
best possible undergraduate
education. Period.
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WHY IT MATTERS
WHY IT MATTERS
•
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