The Small College Experience: Comparisons, Challenges, and Opportunities

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Institutions of higher education span as great a range of size, illustrating as great a variation in fixed and variable inputs, as most of the firms that economists have occasion to study: farms, marketing concerns, recreation businesses, and the like. In the educational field, professionals at the smaller schools frequently look to their counterparts at larger institutions for innovation and leadership. This is, perhaps, a natural outgrowth of the age, prestige, and scope of academic enterprise which typify most of the larger universities.