Our survival is of little consequence for its own sake. It is of vital importance, however, to a world that badly needs broadly educated, humane, and purposeful leaders and thus needs more than ever educational institutions that recognize that change is a constant, and that seek to prepare students for leadership in an environment of change. These are challenging times for higher education. Every natural impulse in such moments is toward caution, especially because, for us, things could hardly be better than they are right now. We have been largely insulated from the buffeting effects of change.
Every instinct is to wait to see what happens next or how some other institution chooses to act.
We laugh at the absurdity. Yet we hear its echoes. Significant change requires, in addition to a compelling rationale, both dollars and will. Few institutions have both in sufficient measure. Middlebury is among those few.