Whether it be because of TikTok, Instagram Reels or a nationwide anti-higher education sentiment, it seems like high school grads are flocking to big state schools rather than small liberal arts colleges. While the obvious rationale would be finances, even students from affluent areas appear to have fallen for the allure of 100,000-seat stadiums and 100-seat lecture halls.
This, to many people, is what comes to mind when they think of the college experience. As someone who went to a large public high school in Texas, I watched this phenomenon occur firsthand — and resisted. Here is my pitch for why I think liberal arts schools are the places to be (no bias, obviously).
First, everyone here loves going to class and talking about it. I know every single one of my friends’ majors, the classes they found most interesting and the classes they barely made it out of alive. Everyone seems to have something that makes them tick. The combination of majors and minors at this school would send many of my friends from home into a coma. The fact that almost everyone has some wild combination of issues that fascinate them makes for a student culture rich in spirit, soul and integrity. I have heard several times that a source of people’s academic anxiety here is that they “can’t major in everything.”
While the culture of bigger schools incites unity over a winning football team or a long-standing tradition (for example, the Aggie ring dunk), Colorado College’s culture in particular supports being an individual. We are united through the celebration of our differing interests. Our culture is to be ourselves.
Second, I couldn’t disappear if I wanted to. Funny way to phrase an upside, I know, but there is something incredible about feeling like more than a cog. I have an advisor who helps me generally, an advisor who specifically helps me with my major and an advisor I can go to for advice while entertaining the idea of applying to law school.
I have eight free therapy sessions a semester and my peers have the opportunity to submit a care report anonymously if they fear for my well-being. I am graded on participation, as are my classmates. There are members of the student body who I have never engaged in small talk with, but I do know what aspects of their childhood motivate their political ideology. I know a book that impacted them deeply and which piece of their adolescent education paved the way for them to pursue their chosen major. I feel sincerely connected to every professor I’ve had here, as if I left a part of myself in each classroom. Our college orientation is a week-long ordeal of community engagement, internal bonding and sharing anxieties. Everything is intentional in a way that makes it so no one’s humanity can be ignored.
This brings me to my final point, and an issue that needs to be addressed: many are afraid of the drama that arises in a small environment. CC is the size of my high school; in both a magical and terrifying way, we all know far too much about each other. But what a small school inadvertently facilitates is almost a form of exposure therapy. If you don’t like someone, you’ll need to figure out how to coexist with them regardless, as you will definitely be seeing them again.
Even if this is exhausting and annoying at the moment, I think it builds an important life skill. You will inevitably have a co-worker you dislike, a friend’s boyfriend you find insufferable or an in-law that drives you up a wall. A smaller environment teaches you how to tread the line between real and cordial.
Overall, college for me has been a wildly intimate experience — and that intimacy is what makes me feel at home. In a materialistic world, I feel like the allure of large party schools is winning out; your life looks like a spectacle and you can share it with the world as such. But liberal arts schools act as covens where people are encouraged to pursue themselves alongside a greater good. I do not go to CC for the luxury private dorms and the winningest football team. I go to CC because I think it facilitates a sense of intimacy and priorities that the rest of the world is deeply lacking. I celebrate what we value here.