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Boarding Schools Face New Hurdles

Posted on: Wednesday, 24 August 2005, 06:00 CDT

Boarding school was a family tradition for Clay Gibson. As a teen, he followed his brother, uncle and great uncle to Baylor School, a 112-year-old private school in Chattanooga, Tenn., whose 670 acres overlook the Tennessee River.

Thirty years later and now an Atlanta law-firm partner, Gibson is a Baylor trustee and easily lists the elite school's many attractions.

But when time came to send his three children to high school, Gibson broke with tradition: He sent his two sons and daughter to a private day school. "We're very involved in our kids' education and life, and we wanted to stay involved on a day-to-day basis," Gibson says. "We wanted them to stay in our home and enjoy that opportunity."

Gibson's decision is part of broader shift plaguing schools like Baylor: While enrollment at private day schools is booming, boarding schools are seeing little or no growth. Boarding-school enrollment stands at 39,000 for the 2004-2005 school year, and has barely budged in five years, says the National Association of Independent Schools. That's down from about 42,000 in the late 1960s, estimate some boarding-school veterans. Enrollment grew 2.7 percent over the past 10 years, versus 15 percent for private day schools.

Boarding-school administrators often blame image problems and competition from day schools. But a growing number of administrators, consultants and parents believe the biggest force at work is a shift in parent philosophy over the past generation. With more mothers working outside the home and with older couples having fewer kids, parents want to be more involved with their children, they say.

"The type of kid who used to go to boarding school has a very different relationship with their parents," says Kelly Makes of Atlanta-based Mindpower Inc., a consulting firm working with Baylor. "Kids are very close to their parents. They are not as independent."

Boarding schools have educated legions of this country's wealthy and powerful. They invoke images of rich endowments, bucolic campuses and reputations for providing the best education money can buy. They are among the oldest educational institutions in the U.S., surviving the Revolutionary War and the revolutionary 1960s, when anti-establishment youths boycotted them.

Some of the most famous boarding schools, such as the Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts and Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, still get many applications for each opening. And boarding schools for children with learning or behavior issues are a growth industry.

But many traditional boarding schools say their prospects are worsening. "It's very critical because other alternatives that are close to home are emerging," says Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents private day and boarding schools.

Source: Cincinnati Post

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