Partnership helps students, post-docs taste the future.(IN HER OWN WORDS)(Company overview)

An increasingly important sector of private higher education has undergone significant change during the past decade.

Small, private liberal arts colleges like Pine Manor that continue the tradition of providing relationship-based liberal arts learning are now serving a population very different from the population we served when most of our institutions were founded many years ago.

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We are now reaching out to students whose education may have been only moderately successful thus far. They are often the first in their family to attend college, have attended large high schools where they may have been fairly anonymous, and are often from low income families and families where English is not their first language.

For example, at Pine Manor College (a women's college), which U.S. News & World Report has rated for four years as the most diverse liberal arts college in the country, 65% of our students receive Pell awards and nearly two-thirds are from families in the lowest 25% of all wage earners.

This is not the profile of the traditional liberal arts college student. Yet, a highly personalized, supportive and intensive learning environment is just what these young people need to spark their creativity, confidence and love for learning. They often find what they need in a college where "everybody knows your name" and believes in your potential.

The challenge for small, under-endowed, financially strapped colleges is to find the resources to offer this effective--but very expensive--education. The ingredients that lead to academic success--low faculty-student ratios, small classes, a variety of physical, emotional and intellectual support services--are the same ones that cause financial strain. How do we do it?