Amanda Growney’s recent article, “The fate of the liberal arts: A look at Muhlenberg College,” is, in my view, one of the most thoughtful and accurate descriptions of the environment facing Muhlenberg College today. Her assessment of the national higher education landscape, the pressures facing small liberal arts colleges and the challenges and opportunities before Muhlenberg is correct in all its essential aspects.
Amanda also captures something that is sometimes lost in the understandable anxiety surrounding change: Muhlenberg is not alone, and our challenges are not evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with our College. Higher education is undergoing a profound transformation. Demographic changes, declining numbers of traditional college-aged students, changing student preferences, rising costs, increasing competition and questions about the value and affordability of a college education are affecting institutions across the country. Small residential liberal arts colleges are particularly exposed to these pressures.
But recognizing that reality cannot become an excuse for inaction. Nor can it become a reason to retreat from what makes Muhlenberg distinctive.
The board’s responsibility is to ensure that Muhlenberg is financially sustainable, academically strong and positioned to fulfill its mission for generations to come. That responsibility sometimes requires difficult decisions. Those decisions are never simply numbers on a spreadsheet. Every position represents a person, a colleague and, often, someone who has made a meaningful difference in the lives of our students. The board recognizes the human impact of these decisions, and we do not take them lightly.
At the same time, a college cannot provide an exceptional education to future generations if its financial model is not sustainable.
Muhlenberg therefore must adapt to changing circumstances while remaining firmly grounded in its identity as a premier residential liberal arts college. We should not try to compete with institutions whose scale, resources and missions are fundamentally different from ours. Our opportunity lies in being exceptionally good at what Muhlenberg does best: providing students with an outstanding liberal arts education in a community where faculty and staff know students, mentor them and challenge them to become thoughtful, capable and engaged citizens.
That is our competitive advantage– and it is also our responsibility.
Amanda is right that our financial resources provide Muhlenberg with an important foundation. But a strong balance sheet is not a strategy. Our resources must be used thoughtfully to invest in the future while protecting the long-term financial health of the institution. We cannot spend our way out of structural challenges. We must make disciplined choices about where our resources will have the greatest impact on students and on the future of the College.
That includes completing and maximizing the value of the Seegers Union project. Construction is disruptive. Its cost is real. But the finished project represents an investment in the student experience and in our ability to introduce prospective students and families to all that is distinctive about Muhlenberg. The question now is how we ensure that the investment delivers the educational, community and enrollment benefits for which it was undertaken.
The same principle applies to every major decision before us.
We need to move beyond a culture in which every difficult decision is viewed only through the lens of what is being lost. We must also ask what we are trying to create. What will Muhlenberg look like five or ten years from now? What will students experience? What opportunities will they have? What will distinguish a Muhlenberg graduate? And what must we do today to make those outcomes possible?
That requires something Amanda also identifies particularly well: we need to be one team. Every member of this community has a role in determining the story that Muhlenberg tells about itself.
There will be disagreement. There should be disagreement. A healthy college community asks difficult questions, challenges assumptions and expects its leaders to explain important decisions. We should be willing to say when something needs to improve. We should bring ideas forward. But once difficult decisions have been carefully considered and made through the appropriate governance processes, we also need to support the institution and the people responsible for carrying those decisions forward.
That is what being one Muhlenberg means.
The coming presidential search is particularly important. Our next president will inherit both significant challenges and extraordinary opportunities. That leader will need to understand the changing landscape of higher education, make difficult decisions, communicate openly and effectively, and most importantly, lead change without losing sight of the people and values at the heart of the College.
Ultimately, however, the future of Muhlenberg will not be determined by one president, one board, one faculty or one group of administrators. It will be determined by all of us.
There is a student who will arrive at Muhlenberg in the future who does not yet know what this College will mean to them. That student will find mentors here. They will discover interests they did not know they had. They will form lifetime friendships. They will have experiences that change the way they see the world. They will graduate with knowledge, confidence, relationships and a sense of purpose.
That is why the decisions we make today matter.
This is a time to be one team. It is a time to support the difficult decisions necessary to secure our future and that of our future students. It is a time to listen, to challenge constructively, to support one another and to move forward together.
And it is a time to be ambitious.
Our goal should not simply be for Muhlenberg to survive the current challenges facing higher education. Our goal should be for Muhlenberg to remain one of the premier liberal arts colleges in the country– recognized for the quality of its education, the strength of its community, the success and outcomes of its graduates and the transformative experience it provides every student.
That future is possible.
But it will require all of us.
One Muhlenberg. One mission. One shared commitment to our students and to the future of this College.
Lance Bruck ’89, P’21
Chair
Muhlenberg College Board of Trustees
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