$106,000 College Education For Free? Antioch College Waiving Tuition For Students Enrolling In Next 3 Years

Four years after Antioch College suspended operations due to financial problems, the private liberal arts institution in southwest Ohio is recharging its system by extending full scholarships to current students and anyone who applies over the next three years, CBS News reports.

Based on the value of the current $26,500 yearly tuition, that makes each scholarship worth at least $106,000, according to CBS News. In addition, students who qualify for financial aid may pay less for room and board, which costs around $8,600 per year.

"We don't want economics to be an impediment to a high-quality liberal arts education," Antioch President Roosevelt said in announcement on the school's website Tuesday. "€œBy providing four year, full-tuition scholarships, we make attending Antioch College a realistic option for the best and brightest students, regardless of their family’s economic situation."

So what inspired Antioch's grand gesture? The college is looking to expand its student population by enrolling 65 to 75 freshman for next fall with the eventual goal of reaching an attendance of 300 students by 2015.

The 150-year-old college was forced to suspend operations in 2008 after years of decline brought about by poor financial decisions, low enrollment and a small endowment, according to Inside Higher Ed. But an influx of donations by the school's alumni allowed the college to reopen in part and admit around 35 students to its freshman class last year.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the college began attracting students in the 1960's due to its association with liberal politics, but enrollment began to decline in the mid-2000's, around time the college introduced a new curriculum without faculty input and made a series of bad financial decisions.

A decade earlier, the college introduced a radical policy requiring students to give explicit verbal consent before any sexual act, causing it to become "a favorite target of pundits seeking to mock political correctness," Inside Higher Ed reports.

As the school looks to reboot, officials hope students from around the country will be attracted to the school and its 12 areas of concentration. The deadline for applying to the school for Fall 2012 is Feb. 15. Intersted students can check out the Antioch's website for more information.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Antioch College's enrollment began to decline in the mid-1990's. In fact, the college's enrollment steadily increased until 2004 and then started to decline.

Comments

[Walt Ulbricht]

05:51 PM on 01/30/2012

Here in Yellow Springs, Ohio there are three institutions named Antioch -- Antioch College, founded in 1852, Antioch University, the administrative center for five regional adult learning campuses located across the nation, and Antioch University Midwest, a recognized national leader in adult learning.

Antioch University and Antioch University Midwest are legally separate entities from Antioch College. AU and AUM focus on adult higher education degrees -- BA, MA and PhD.

Friday's national news story about free tuition at Antioch College also resulted in hundreds of inquiries, emails and phone calls to both AU and AUM.

Walt Ulbricht
Director of Marketing and Communications
Antioch University Midwest

[RowanKaiser]

11:44 PM on 01/29/2012

Dear Huffington Post -

The idea that the controversy surrounding the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy caused the collapse in enrollment is factually incorrect, and, after the original article didn't include it, baffling.

Enrollment at Antioch dropped when the college's corporate owners, Antioch University, implemented a mandatory "Renewal Plan" in the mid-2000s. Their failure to fund that plan caused enrollment to drop from roughly 600 students to 400, which triggered them closing the college.

Before that, enrollment had been relatively stable, if a bit uncomfortable, at 500-700 students from 1980 until 2005. The SOPP controversy did not trigger an enrollment crisis. Through the 1990s, admissions and transferred increased and decreased fairly normally. In 2001, the college was at the peak of an up-swing in admissions, and more students were attending then than had attended before.

The idea that the college's sometimes radical student politics caused its closure is mere hippie-punching, and not demonstrated by any kind of evidence. You can do better.

[RowanKaiser]

12:04 AM on 01/30/2012

I think this version of the comment is superior, but I have a soft spot for the second one.

[jack sprat2]

02:29 PM on 01/30/2012

You and Alan assert two things which , taken together, lead me to a likely conclusion. Antioch University would seem to have been a creature created by the administrators and Trustees of the College, likely to monetize its reputation, no doubt redounding to the personal fortunes of some number of insiders. Perhaps nothing even remotely criminal, just a perfectly legal way to imperil the existing enterprise. Any number of undesirable outcomes then become possible, up to and including the bankruptcy of BOTH College and University. As it happened, I'm guessing, the profitable--to said insiders, even if it were itself nominally a 'non-profit'--University somehow stayed afloat. I'm shocked.

This is a familiar pattern. In most cases the people who carry out these little adventures are lifelong, card-carrying members-in-good-standing of the forces of Progressivism. Your friends have done this to mutual life insurance companies, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, the nursing home industry, the hospital industry, and any number of big-city public school systems. Just as Klansmen in white robes didn't repeatedly conduct nighttime raids, to use an example close to my own heart, on the City of Detroit to scourge its peaceful citizens, nor did the John Birch Society or the Koch brothers or the Bass family loot these public trusts of generations of accumulated capital and goodwill. Your own did. Those who smoked pot, marched, and networked with their fellow Progressives. Good on you, mate. How's THAT for irony?

[Alan Benard]

11:44 PM on 01/29/2012

The author of this idiotic piece is a liar and a poor researcher. The claim that enrollment began to decline in the mid 1990s is not correct, nor is it stated in the Inside Higher Ed piece you site. Enrollment declined in the mid 2000s when the Antioch University Board of Trustees starved the Yellow Springs undergraduate program for money, then forced the faculty to completely revamp the curriculum in the space of one year with promises of tens of millions of dollars. AU lied about the money and the new curriculum drove off more than half the students. Antioch College was killed by then Chancellor Toni Murdock and a board dominated by the university's satellite campuses, which didn't appreciate student culture or politics. The defaming and firing of the former Antioch College tenured faculty by recently replace board chairman Lee Morgan is despicable, amounting to a McCarthyesque blacklisting of those who are the least bit liberal politically. Avoid this school -- the only alumni supporting it are aged and will be soon dead, while any former students under 50 know that their school was stolen and ruined.

[Hope Anne Nathan]

11:42 PM on 01/29/2012

Enrollment did not decline with the introduction of the Sexual Offense Policy ("SOP") in 1990 (later changed to "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy," or "SOPP"). Enrollment steadily INCREASED until 2004 when Antioch University's Renewal Commission sought to fix something that wasn't broken. The final nail in the coffin came in the form of a dramatically revamped curriculum, again at the behest of the University, in 2005. Incidentally, the University claimed that it understood that the curriculum transition would be a challenge, and pledged to financially support the College for the first five years of said curriculum. Then the University used the declining enrollment, in no small part CAUSED by the new curriculum, to announce plans in 2007 to shutter the college.

Antioch's closure had everything to do with financial mismanagement. It was NOT caused by the school's refusal to tolerate date rape.

[tblackhawk]

11:32 AM on 01/31/2012

Thanks, Hope. Well said! Given that at least 20% of US women will experience date rape during their college careers, other colleges and universities would do well to adopt Antioch's SOPP, not scorn it.

[RowanKaiser]

11:36 PM on 01/29/2012

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Antioch College had enrollment issues, but to blame the Sexual Offense Prevention Policy is to ignore the facts. There were two major factors in enrollment plummeting: a student strike in the early 1970s based on Nixon cutting financial aid, which also corresponded to an end of a "golden age" or at least a "crowded age" of enrollment, with around 2000 students. After that, enrollment stabilized at the historical norm for the college, which was around 500-700 students.

It varied around there until the middle of the 2000s, when the Antioch University (the corporation controlling the college) board implemented a disastrous curriculum shift called the "Renewal Plan." That Plan's failure led directly to the board deciding to close the college.

It's fun and easy to declare that damn dirty hippies caused the college to close with their crazy politics. There's no evidence for that, though, and after CBS's initial article got that right, it's embarrassing for HuffPo to get that so wrong.