Washington Monthly - September/October 2015 - 46

CATHARINE BOND HILL Vassar College Vassar has a reputation as one of the most elite colleges in the U.S.-the kind of school that took in the daughters and (more recently) sons of the country's wealthiest families. Hill, on the other hand, came from an academic background working on college affordability and access for low-income students. She took over in 2006 after serving as provost at Williams College, which underwent a transformation of its own during her tenure, and she has proceeded to push Vassar to great strides in those areas. "[We] shifted from 60 percent non-financial aid, 40 percent financial aid, to 60 percent financial aid, 40 percent non-financial aid," she told the Washington Monthly earlier this year. "And from 20, 22 percent students of color to 40 percent students of color, that's big." It represents a major shift in both focus and Catharine Bond Hill budget priorities-$27 million of Vassar's endowment went toward financial aid in Hill's first year, compared to more than $60 million this year. It's not a full-scale transformation of the student body, but it's a blueprint for how elite schools can balance remaining competitive in their traditional student base of upper-class achievers while also committing to a more social justice-oriented mission of diversity and upward mobility. "Will it solve higher education's problems? No. But at least it's going in the right direction," Hill said. "And if other schools in our sector did it, it would be a great thing." PAUL LEBLANC Southern New Hampshire University While some presidents on this list are finding new ways to embrace affordability in the context of large state schools and elite private ones, LeBlanc is shooting for something completely different. Southern New Hampshire, a private school, has a traditional campus in Manchester that houses about 3,000 students. LeBlanc opened a satellite campus 46 September/October 2015 in 2008 that sits in an office park and charges one-third the price of the main one. It's all about fundamentals, he told the Washington Monthly at the time: "Could we offer the essential educational experience-lots of academic support and advising, and really good teaching, and small classes, the things that are at the heart of what we do-and strip away all of the other things that add cost?" The idea worked, and other schools (including state university systems) began to copy it. LeBlanc took an even bolder step last year in announcing the country's first fully accredited $10,000 online bachelor's degree program. It's an attempt to bridge the gap between academic study that most colleges cherish and the vocational training that employers are calling for-the nimble flexibility of an online degree with the essential proficiencies you won't get from Paul LeBlanc the kind of for-profit colleges that often prey in this area. When you're preaching "nofrills" college and you've already stripped away everything but the classrooms, it turns out there's only one thing left to cut. Bigger powers took notice-LeBlanc took a threemonth sabbatical in March to be a senior adviser to Department of Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell on college access, affordability, and innovative academic programs. One result? A federal experiment allowing students to use Pell Grants to pay for coding boot camps. MICHAEL SORRELL Paul Quinn College Sorrell was essentially cold-called in 2007 about taking over Paul Quinn, which was close to shutting its gates for good. "When people call you up to offer you a job you didn't apply for, either you're amazing or no one else wanted the job," he told the Washington Monthly. "It was the latter. Everything was broken." The nearly 150-year-old historically black college only had about 250 students, and was having trouble keeping them in school. One of Sorrell's first moves was to take on two very different birds-the school's budMichael Sorrell get deficit, and the surrounding community's status as a federally recognized food desert-with one stone. He disbanded the football team, no easy task in Dallas, and literally turned the field into a farm. The team had been costing $600,000 a year, according to Yahoo Sports, and Sorrell said it would have cost $2 million to save. The farm is op- Vassar College/John Abbott; Courtesy of Southern New Hampshire University; ASSOCIATED PRESS ing, the first of our lists to include it, the school has risen to thirty-fourth this year. These increases are thanks in large part to an ambitious online education program as well as a greater emphasis on research, funding for which has tripled since Crow took over. While his massive reforms aren't workable at all schools (they're tailormade for large, research-heavy institutions with money to spare), his ideas are getting lots of attention from a higher ed community that's always looking for ways to get more degrees in the hands of less-advantaged students.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2015