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Why We Need Micro Colleges

We are experiencing the rebirth of smallness. Farmers markets, tiny homes, and brew pubs all exemplify our love of smallness. So do charter schools, coffee shops, and local bookstores. . . At its core, education is a human-to-human interaction… Smallness allows us to be more human.”

— Marcus Ford, Flagstaff College Founder


Micro colleges ask, “How can education contribute to human flourishing and the well-being of the world?” And they shape a college experience to address that question.

The ultimate justification for a tiny college is the conviction that each of us comes into our full humanity by close interaction with those who know and care for us, and that one of the basic purposes of higher education is social. Although we give lip service to the idea that a college education will make us better people, when all is said and done, we think of higher education primarily in economic terms.

We have come to think of higher education as a means to making a living rather than making a life. We have also come to see higher education as a private good rather than a public one. We have lost sight of the fact that we are individuals in community with others, and our well-being is intimately connected with the health of the Earth.

Read the Essay in YES! Magazine

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What are the defining features of a Micro-College?

 1.     SIZE Micro-colleges intend to stay small out of a philosophical commitment to the premise that human beings are fundamentally social beings who develop best in a supportive community. Healthy human development requires positive, personal relationships. We are individuals in community with others, and our well-being is intimately connected with the health of the Earth. One of the most important purposes of higher education is to help us arrive at our full humanity by supporting our deep-seated desire to be in community with others.

 2.     WHOLISTIC Curricula and pedagogy are directed toward the development of the whole person. While students may explore various areas of inquiry, the overall aim of a micro-college education is to nurture a student’s capacity for critical, constructive, and creative thinking and the development of a well-considered ethical orientation to the world.

 3.     PLURALISTIC Micro-colleges embrace rich forms of knowledge and expansive forms of learning that extend beyond Western philosophy and science and include Non-western ways of knowing and being. Knowledge is not value-neutral nor can it be reduced to information; it is bound to relationships of reverence with land, people, and all beings. This epistemological bias informs the curricula at most micro-colleges.

 4.     PURPOSEFUL Micro-colleges provide students thoughtfully-shaped, coherent programs for the purpose of living lives of meaning and purpose that extend beyond career development and job training. The process of education is not a matter of accumulating credit hours as quickly as possible in order to move, as quickly as possible, into a job. Education is a life-path and ought not to be reduced to a career path. Career preparation follows from the primary goal of education of the whole person.

 5.     FOR THE COMMON GOOD Micro-colleges understand higher education as a social good rather than a business. They are non-profit institutions that understand themselves not as corporations or as self-constituted municipalities but as communities of learners focused on strengthening the social fabric. As such, they play an essential role in contributing to and sustaining public well-being within democratic structures. Students are not consumers or resources but robust citizen participants in democratic society. Concerns about institutional growth are replaced by attention to the growth of students as fully developed, vibrant participants in their communities.

 6.     SHARED INQUIRY In a micro-college, the primary role of the faculty is to teach and mentor students. Teaching is respected as an intensely creative practice that depends on a breadth and depth of knowledge. Faculty regard themselves as members of a community of learners, enjoying the enrichment that arises from participation in shared inquiry. Micro-colleges emphasize teaching and learning almost exclusively as their preeminent purpose and activity.

 7.     EMPOWERING Students are included in the processes of shaping the educational experience in their institutions. In some micro-colleges, students are included as decision-makers in all areas of college functioning; in others, they have a substantial voice in curriculum development, special programming, community outreach, and other relevant matters. 

 8.     TRANSDISCIPLINARY and EXPERIENTIAL Rather than offering a vast array of majors, micro-colleges tend to focus on a core set of transdisciplinary courses, supplemented by special topics, electives, and field-based experiences (e.g., internships, practicums, etc.) In many cases, students advance through courses as a cohort. Most classes are face-to-face. Immersive and experiential courses are common; on-line courses are rare.

 9.    KNOWLEDGE & KNOW-HOW LINKED Micro-colleges see education as a means to real-world problem-solving as well as personal growth. Labor and service are recognized as important aspects of such learning.  Manual labor on farms, ranches, gardens, and campus is required by some micro-colleges. Community service is required by others. Work is valued as a way for students to become more knowledgeable, skillful, and confident in their capacity to contribute to the well-being of the world.

 10.  FOCUSED ON THE WELL-BEING OF THE PLANET Micro-colleges share a critique of the current state of higher education. Not only are many colleges and universities both too big and too expensive, but they have accepted a neo-liberal economic model that demands endless institutional growth and conceives of education primarily as a strategy for economic advancement. In contrast, micro-colleges take seriously the need to address the urgent environmental, social, and economic challenges of the day. And they understand the role of higher education in the formation of a vision of a world that is sustainable, just, and flourishing.

 11.  SITES OF HOPE Toward this end, micro-colleges are sites of hope. They share the goal of helping students to live lives of meaning, hope, courage, and zest by providing them with the knowledge and skills to do so. They are inspired by a vision of a world made better by the wisdom that comes when creativity, care, knowledge, and know-how are passed from generation to generation.

Why Flagstaff College?

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“Small is not just beautiful, it is necessary to the sense of one's self, one's purpose, one's situation in a confusing world. "Tiny Colleges" are to learning what immersion is to the study of language: intense, direct, and personal. In this instance, two seasoned educators with broad experience in U.S. higher education propose to form such a place to enable a selected few students to discover their unique path in life, learn the kind of ideas that energize a lifetime of good work, and anchor themselves to enduring values. This is the kind of education that draws students forth into their own special greatness and it cannot be mass-produced.”
David Orr, Pioneering leader in Sustainability and Ecological Literacy