Towards a Poor College: Shaping Our Priorities in an Era of Austerity

In the United States, there are schools with large endowments and immense financial resources … and there are other types of schools such as underfunded regional public universities. The truth is, most American students go to poor colleges, not rich ones. Instead of seeing the poor college as a place of lack, might we find some benefits in such an environment? Drawing on ideas from Virginia Woolf, Jerzy Grotowski, and, especially, the work of Matt Brim and Danica Savonick, Matthew Cheney teases out some ideas about what really matters in education and how we might position ourselves as proud members of a poor college movement.