Champion of the Small College Experience, Loren Pope '33, Profiled in New York Times

March 5, 2007

March 5, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - Loren B. Pope, author of Looking Beyond the Ivy League and Colleges That Change Lives and 1933 graduate of DePauw University, has spent recent years "vigorously promoting to high school students and their parents the virtues of small, little-known liberal arts colleges," reports the New York Times. The 96-year-old Pope -- former education editor of the Times who went on to become an independent college counselor -- is "A Fighter for Colleges That Have Everything but Status," according to the newspaper's headline.

Pope, writes Alan Finder, "sees as false the assumption that the selectivity of Ivy League and other elite colleges translates into the best education. Instead, he advocates colleges that accept a broad range of students, not just the top academic performers. And he argues that colleges with fewer than 3,000 students offer the best educational experience because students will have more opportunities to get to know professors well, both inside and outside the classroom."

Pope, a history major who played football at DePauw, declares, "the smaller the school, the more impact it can have on a kid ... My mission in life is to change the way people think about colleges."

His alma mater, with a student body of 2,400 students and a faculty/student ratio of one to eleven, is not on the latest list of 40 small colleges. Pope believes DePauw has become, among other things, "too prosperous and too selective," according to the Times.

"It was probably inevitable that the heightened attention Mr. Pope brought to his favorite colleges would eventually worry him. Some have become too popular, in his mind at least," articulates Finder. "Between editions of the book he eliminated several colleges, including Bard, Grinnell and Franklin & Marshall, because he thought they had become too selective and were not admitting a sufficiently broad range of students. They were replaced by Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., and New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla., among others."

Read the complete story at the Times' Web site (a free registration may be required).

Back