Have We Lost the Classic Liberal Arts College?: An Examination of a Threatened Organizational Form

In recent years, distinctions among types of higher-education organizations have progressively eroded. Our focus within this trend is on the nation’s oldest organizational type—the small, undergraduate-focused, residential, arts-and-sciences‑centered private liberal arts college (LAC)—which has been, according to conventional wisdom, slowly losing its own distinctiveness. We draw on the theory of strategic action fields to understand the organizational and field‑level patterns for private LACs as they adapt to their changing environments. We use multilevel latent profile analysis to analyze quantitative data on 414 private LACs from 2004 to 2023 to empirically evaluate whether the classic organizational form of the “private LAC” is indeed eroding, and if so, how. Results indicate that this population is indeed differentiating as evidenced by four distinct form profiles. There is also both stability and change of this organizational form between 2004 and 2023, suggesting that most private LACs in the study have adapted their organizational form and continue to do so in response to the evolving challenges they face. At the field level, our findings, and theory, point toward resettlement rather than the wide-sweeping erosion of the private LAC field.