Small College Database

The Small College Database was developed by Charles S. Tidball during the late 1980s. At the outset, fifteen variables of demographic data plus a remarks field were accumulated for three time periods: 1963, 1973, and 1983. When the 1993 data were appended, additional variables were included for that time period. Faculty data for both the 1983 and the 1993 datapoints have been added since. The database now contains information on 1,116 accredited colleges that ever had a full-time enrollment of fewer than 2,000 students. It is not available in print but is maintained in a spreadsheet format (Microsoft Excel) at the Tidball Center for the Study of Educational Environments at Hood College and at the Tidball residence in Washington, DC. An abbreviated example of the database is viewable here.

Additional Details

1. Rationale for creating the database.

In the course of managing an educational enterprise, it is occasionally useful to compare oneself to similar institutions. This is rendered more difficult if one cannot find reliable information on the demographics of similar colleges. It is possible to examine data from the U.S. Department of Education, but they do not provide very much detail for the more than 700 accredited small colleges. Alternatively, one can consult the standard college guides, but there is no longitudinal information in such publications. The Small College Database was created to provide a solution to both of these deficiencies. Because of the large number of colleges represented in the database, it is possible to create very precise cohort lists for any given small college. Further, because data from colleges that were once small and have exceeded the size criterion are still present in the database, it is also possible to use these data to assemble summaries of changes in higher education that have taken place over the last several decades. Eight of the tables in Taking Women Seriously were developed from this resource.

2. Definition of small college

There has never been a formal definition of "small colleges." At the midpoint of the 20th century, the U.S. Office of Education maintained a set of institution types for American collegiate institutions. The classifications were published in an annual Education Directory and used as a basis for reporting in biennial surveys. In 1953, when the total enrollment in all institutions of higher education was 2.2 million students, the mean enrollment per institution was 1,186 with only the technological schools and universities having mean enrollments greater than 1,000 students. At that time, the 713 liberal arts colleges had a mean enrollment of 796, but there was considerable variation in enrollment for this group and by 1963 14% of liberal arts colleges had enrollments in excess of 2,500 students. Today, with the total enrollment in excess of 15 million students, there have been many changes in the distribution of enrollment as well as how institutions are categorized. In spite of this, the actual number of colleges below an enrollment of 2,500 students has remained constant over the 30 year period between 1963 and 1993. There is considerable diversity within this group and not all the small colleges of the 1963 list are present in the 1993 list, but the actual number of accredited small colleges has remained at approximate 745 for the four datapoints from 1963 to 1993. This, then, is the basis for considering that there is such an entity as small colleges and that they can be defined primarily in terms of enrollment.

3. Column headers

Primary headers (appear only once)

COLLEGE = the complete name of the college or university; STATE=a three letter abbreviation for the state in which the college is located; CHURCH = church affiliation, if present; CHANGE = year of change in church affiliation, if applicable; REMARKS = a general purpose field of unrestricted length.

Secondary headers (appear for each datapoint except as indicated below)

TYPE = institution type based on the sex of students: CoE = coeducational college, MEN = men's college, WOM = women's college, MCh = men's change college, WCh = women's change college, ; FOUNDING AFFILIATION: A = church affiliated, F = formerly church affiliated, I = independent, and P = public; MULTIPURPOSE: B = African-American, C = commuter campus, special (@ = name change, N = no data), P = public, and S = specialized curriculum; CAMPUS CHARACTERISTICS: C = commuter campus or R = residential campus, and L = liberal arts curriculum or S = specialized curriculum; MEN = full-time enrollment of male students, WOM = full-time enrollment of female students; ENR = full-time enrollment not disaggregated by sex; TUITION; TUITION AS CONSTANT 1963 $ (1973 and 1983 only); MPT = head count of part-time enrollment of men (1993 only); WPT = head count of part-time enrollment of women (1993 only); TOTAL ENROLLMENT (1993 only, not used for every college); several columns of sex disaggregated faculty data (1983 and 1993 only -- present only for those colleges that permit publication of their data in Academe).

4. Primary information sources

College guides are customarily published annually in paper back editions and back issues are not retained by most libraries. However the first edition of Comparative Guide to American Colleges by Cass and Birnbaum published in 1964 was published in hard cover. The volume was acquired by the Apple Library at Hood College and was still available some twenty years later when the database was started. The 6th, 11th, and 16th editions of that compendium have been the primary source for subsequent datapoints at ten year intervals. The faculty data came from Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors. This source has provided annual data on faculty for some years, but they did not sex disaggregate that information until 1977; therefore the first Small College Database datapoint that included faculty information was 1983. In some instances, data not present in the primary sources were obtained directly from the colleges.

5. Comparison with data from the U. S. Department of Education

In the following table there is a comparison between the number (#) and the mean enrollment (mean) for "small colleges" using data derived from publications of the U.S. Department of Education and data derived from the Small College Database. There are at least five differences between the actual data from the two sources. At first examination, the mean enrollments from the two sources seem to be different, however the standard deviations for these numbers is high (on the order of half the value of the mean). With standard deviations of this magnitude, it is obvious that either set of numbers (and, by extension, other derived numbers) are a valid representation of the "true" population of small colleges.