Instead of hiring outside consultants for each institution's problems, these colleges set up their own three-person permanent consulting team. Among its accomplishments are: averting a financial crisis, aiding a recovery from financial crisis, reorganizing for steady states, and launching statewide planning. (Author/LBH)

Many liberal arts colleges will survive or disappear depending on how well they can analyze their problems and apply solutions. What is needed is a College Futures Planning Center that could provide at minimal cost consulting and support services to private colleges seriously desiring to contend with decline. (Author/LBH)

The final chapter of a study of the failure of four small private colleges implicates their trustees. Trustees were found to have had inadequate participation in planning and operational realities, the consequence in part, of a lack of critical information. (LBH)

A confidential survey revealed these complaints: governing boards too often are oblivious to financial problems; multicampus boards are remote and uninterested; there is too little time to do everything; inherited staff do not always cooperate; women presidents have a special problem in the hostess role. (Editor/LBH)

Trustees, it is suggested, should keep an eye out for burgeoning short-term debt, over-optimistic income estimates, hidden enrollment problems, student attrition, and loss of special revenue sources. The absolute size of a college is seen as a factor in making the decision to close. (MLW)