Agrowing crisis of identity at Mills College
Liberal arts school in turmoil as steep cuts threaten to strip away defining programs
OAKLAND — The future of Mills College — and its liberal arts identity — is under fierce debate as the Bay Area’s only women’s college struggles with falling enrollment, ongoing budget cuts and a controversial proposal to eliminate long-standing arts programs that define its character.
The small, picturesque 163year-old college is reeling from the administration’s proposal — abruptly announced last month
to the surprise of students and faculty — to cut its dance major and its American Studies and book-art programs. Those and other changes listed in a memo, “Transforming Mills’ Curriculum for the 21st Century,” were pitched as ways to modernize the college’s offerings and balance a projected $5.7 million budget shortfall.
But many on campus say the college’s financial problems, though real, have been overstated and that Mills shouldn’t be so quick to slash programs in the name of efficiency.
“There’s a concern that slowly the unusual things are going to be eaten away and Mills is going to be changed into a streamlined, normal place,” said Grace Forrest, a senior majoring in creative writing and minoring in journalism and book art, an interdisciplinary program that includes book printing and binding.
Liberal arts colleges across the country are grappling with similar existential questions as they vie for a smaller group of high school seniors amid broad concerns over rising tuition costs and student-loan debt and growing demand for larger research institutions with more career-oriented majors, said Richard Ek- man, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Council of Independent Colleges.
In addition to the declining “fashionability” of traditional liberal arts majors, Ekman said, women’s colleges are struggling to attract students as they once did. “The question,” he said, “is whether it’s a permanent change or whether it’s cyclical.”
Mills — where full year’s tuition has soared to $43,000, not including other fees, room or board — saw its total enrollment drop for the second straight year this fall to 1,405 students, a decline of nearly 13 percent from 2013. It enrolled just 134 first-year undergraduates, 8 percent fewer than expected.
It has 867 undergraduate women and 538 graduate students, who include men.
Like most colleges, Mills’ revenue relies heavily on tuition; last year, its “volatile enrollment” and other problems caused Moody’s to downgrade its bond rating to a notch above junk status. But Mills is unlikely to abandon its single-sex undergraduate mission; 25 years ago, a decision to admit men was overturned after furious students held a 16-day strike with the mantra “better dead than coed.”
Founded as the Young Ladies’ Seminary in Benicia just two years after California became a state, Mills was the first women’s college west of the Rockies. It moved to its 135-acre Oak- land campus in 1871.
This year’s near-closure of Sweet Briar, a women’s college in rural Virginia, brought the challenges of single-sex colleges to the fore and reverberated on the Oakland campus.
Still, few seem to worry that Mills will face a similar fate, given its Bay Area location, coed graduate program, strong alumni giving and $183 million endowment.
“It’s a stable institution, and it’s just a rough patch in a long history,” said Gabriela Ramirez, a sophomore majoring in political, legal and economic analysis.
In fact, some students and faculty suspect the Mills administration is exaggerating its financial problems as it negotiates a contract with its newly organized adjunct professors. They say campus leaders are failing to communicate a clear rationale for the changes while keeping details of the college’s budget, endowment and curricular changes secret.
Indeed, the set of recommendations due to the college’s board of trustees by Dec. 1 will not be made public, said President Alecia DeCoudreaux, who is stepping down in June at the end of her five-year contract.
“It’s too preliminary, and there’s too many variables,” she said.
Shortly after the proposal’s release, students held protests and faculty leaders explained in a letter to students, alumni and other employees that their governing body was not consulted on the proposed changes, which they deemed “premature” and “not fully developed.”
In an interview last week, DeCoudreaux stressed that no decisions had been made and that the proposal was merely intended to generate feedback from students and faculty. She said the college was also looking for other ways to raise revenue, such as leasing a portion of its land to developers.
“Our commitment is to maintaining the best liberal arts program we can possibly offer to our students,” she said, adding that the notion that Mills has abandoned the arts “could not be further from the truth.”
As the college debates its curriculum, other students have come forward to demand that Mills become more inclusive and welcoming to nonwhite students — about half of all undergraduates and 42 percent of graduate students — if it wants to attract them to the school.
“Maybe we should be thinking about making the campus as a whole feel like a place where people from different backgrounds feel like they belong,” said Evelyn Carmack, a senior majoring in women, gender and sexuality studies.
The threat of losing the dance major prompted the dance and theater studies department to reflect on its programs and think of ways to reinvent itself. Its redesigned dance program would likely include “interdisciplinary performance art” with such majors as English, ethnic studies and computer science, said Sheldon Smith, who heads the department.
“There’s nothing like crisis,” Smith said, “to light a fire under people and deeply embrace what it is to change.”