"It's been in the news, and I think about it, but it doesn't personally affect me, " said Corrina Waxman, 21, a film student at Purchase College, a small liberal arts school just north of New York City.

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This post was written by Stephanie Browner, Dean of Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, the newest and fastest-growing urban liberal arts college in New York.

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So he joined the board of Simon's Rock College, a liberal arts school in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

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So he lit out for the Berkshires and joined the board of Simon's Rock College, a liberal arts school in Great Barrington, Mass.

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The new partners cover a broad range of institutions, from Ivy League universities Columbia and Brown, which has lagged in offering free online courses, to Wesleyan, a small liberal arts college, to a top-ranked music school, Berklee College of Music, to state schools like University of Maryland at College Park, to foreign institutions like Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Melbourne.

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If thinkers like Vedder and Murray had more sway, some of the kids struggling with algebra in high school would be studying welding or car mechanics instead, and many of the ones whiling away four years on liberal arts courses would be studying nursing or software instead.

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