PROVIDENCE As Ivy League universities report record numbers of applications, four-year private colleges with less marquee names have been struggling to grab students who are worried about cost and the lingering effects of the pandemic.
In Rhode Island, five of the state’s private, four-year colleges report stable applications. In the case of the Ivy League s Brown University, they are skyrocketing.
Bryant University did not offer anyone for comment, and Roger Williams University said it was too early to comment on applications for the class of 2025.
Robert Kelchen, associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, said the pandemic will have “a lasting impact” on higher education for years to come.
Rhode Island Rescues
Photograph by Gavin Ashworth. All photographs courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, Rhode Island.
The story of the Preservation Society begins with the mission to rescue Hunter House (Fig. 1) and the question put to financier George Henry Warren Jr. after its purchase by his wife, Katherine Warren: “Well, you’ve got this house, now what are you going to do with it?”
In 1945, Newport stone carver John Howard Benson became alarmed that Hunter House a rare surviving waterfront property with deep ties to Newport’s history might be irretrievably lost. The residence was no longer needed by the Rhode Island Catholic Diocese, which had used it for a convent, and its survival was in jeopardy. So concerned was Benson that he and John Perkins Brown, whose Georgian Society also wished to save Hunter House, decided to speak with the Warrens. Benson and Brown traveled to the couple’s winter residence in New York City to warn, “the grea