President Samhat meets with OG&B staff
On November 7, the Old Gold and Black Newspaper staff had its annual meeting with Dr. Samhat, the president of Wofford College. The construction of new buildings at Wofford, registration, interim, sports, among other topics, were discussed that afternoon. One of the main topics of the meeting was raised by a question asked by Meghan Daniel, the editor-in-chief of the student’s publication. She invited Dr. Samhat to share insight to Wofford’s recent board meeting and their discussion of what the future of the college might look like.
Dr. Samhat said that, “in about six to seven years we are going to see a sharp decline in the number of high school graduates in this country” and this could be due to “recession, people getting married later [and] smaller families.”
In the next decade, all of these factors will contribute to how not only Wofford College but also other higher education institutions will look like. Dr. Samhat also stated that this is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the South where there are “some declines [in high school graduates]” but it still remains “robust” compared to other regions of the country like the “midwest and northeast, who see some pressure in enrollments at small colleges.”
However, the factors already mentioned do raise the question of “what would [future] students look like?” Other factors that could potentially change the demographic of college students is the increasing enrollment of women, Asian and Hispanic students.
Moreover, all of this leads to a bigger question of “what the world is going to look like?” It is possible to see a change in “the traditional age population [of college students],” faculty, academics, the curriculum and the size of the college, among other factors.
However, change is not bad and it is not the first time Wofford has experienced it. For example, now the construction of a building dedicated only to Environmental studies, it is a big change considering “Environmental Studies wasn’t part of the nineteenth century liberal arts school…the traditional liberal arts core programs [have] evolved.” Dr. Samhat said that although for the moment the college does not have all of the answers, they are already preparing for the future of the college and its students.
