BI-COLLEGE CONSORTIUM: A SIBLING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO OF AMERICA’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS, SELECTIVE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES

The Bi-College Consortium is a formal relationship between Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College that builds upon and cements more than one hundred years of cooperation and collaboration between the two institutions. The two selective liberal arts colleges have a common foundation and an intertwined history which has seen various degrees of coordination between the two, especially when both operated as single-sex institutions (Bryn Mawr remains so). Both colleges have developed reputations as prestigious, highly selective, and academic rigorous institutions and have long-been associated with the upper classes of American society, despite their progressive Quaker ethos, albeit they are amongst the most socially inclusive third-level schools in the United States today.

ABOUT

The two colleges owe their foundation to the Quaker community that settled in Western Philadelphia in the earliest days of the colony of Pennsylvania. When William Penn established Pennsylvania as a free colony for Quakers escaping persecution in Europe and in the New England region, a large group of Welsh-speaking Quakers purchased an area that came to be known as the “Welsh Tract” and is now synonymous with the socially exclusive “Main Line” area of Philadelphia. The neighbouring towns of Bryn Mawr and Haverford that lie within this tract both are named for towns in Wales where many of their founding fathers originated. The Welsh influence in the region was further compounded by the migration of Welsh Anglicans to nearby townships, encouraged by the commonality of the Welsh language and way of life.

Those Welsh Quakers began to settle in the area shortly after the sale of land was completed in 1681 and whilst they were quick to establish meeting rooms, elementary schools and other community facilities and amenities, it would be many, many years before any colleges would be established. This is largely to do with the Quaker tradition of not having ordained ministers and thus no need for a theological seminary to train clergy as was the historic basis for many other ancient tertiary institutions in North America and beyond. Despite the dominance of the Quaker community and influence in the region, most of the older colleges and universities in and around Pennsylvania owe their foundation to Moravian, Anglican and Methodist communities and had been established to train clergy or missionaries.

In the 19^th Century and with the advent of industrialised commerce, Philadelphian Quakers, and their near neighbours from communities to the West began to recognise the need to establish higher-level educational institutions that provided instruction in fields useful to support enterprise and public administration but that were shaped by Quaker ideals and principles. The existing colleges and universities had pivoted from being largely faith-based seminaries to broader European-style research universities (albeit most maintained some school of divinity or theological seminary within their structures). For practicing Quakers, few options existed that aligned with their own ethos. Many young Quakers attended the University of Pennsylvania which did not have a Quaker foundation but had come to be associated with the denomination. Others had ventured further afield to other universities across the Northeast or the Midsouth. Of concern to some faith leaders was the increasing dominance of High Church Protestants (Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran particularly and, to a lesser degree, Methodists) in the upper echelons of American political and commercial life and the growing trend of conversion amongst social aspirant Protestants from lower Church backgrounds, such as Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Calvinists). As Methodism grew in Wales, so too had it begun to influence the Welsh Quaker communities to the west of Philadelphia.

In response to these trends, the Quakers began to establish their own colleges that would offer an equal quality of education to those grand institutions that dotted the East Coast but that would do so enshrined in the Quaker faith, promoting the ideas of inquiry-based learning, moral character, and good citizenship, all of which were quite progressive at that time. Moreover, Quaker fundamentals of pacifism, anti-slavery and the role of women were distinctly in contrast to the wider American public mindset and few college campuses promoted or tolerated such ideas as readily.

Following the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of 1833, Quaker elders determined that a college for young men was necessary and set about founding Haverford College, the oldest Quaker liberal arts college in the United States. Established as a male-only Quaker college, Haverford broke the mould when it began to accept non-Quakers as early as 1849. It quickly became a popular choice for Methodist and Episcopal students.

Bryn Mawr College was founded nearby in 1885 to provide similar quality instruction to young women in the Quaker tradition and from their early years the two colleges enjoyed a brother/sister relationship. Bryn Mawr followed the path set by its brother college by accepting non-Quaker students from 1893 and it too became a popular choice with the Episcopal and Methodist communities that were dotted around Eastern Pennsylvania and neighbouring states.

The growth of these colleges was tied heavily to the development of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Main Line railway system which encouraged many wealthy Philadelphians, who were key figures on the nation’s social circle and dominated the Social Register in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, to move to grand estates in the hills to the west of the city. They departed city centre neighbourhoods like Rittenhouse Square and moved to the leafy enclaves west of the city and south of the Schuylkill River. The communities that once comprised the Welsh tract were now better known as the Main Line and had come to be associated with prestige and the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant hegemony. Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Rutgers University (then a private institution considered to be a peer to those schools that later formed the Ivy League) and Swarthmore College, amongst a select few others, were their preferred educational institutions and the places where one might find a suitable marriage partner. They had started to become the bastions of privilege and the breeding grounds of the future American elite. The relaxing of Quaker-only admissions policies had displaced the Quaker community with members of other, more conservative, and more socially exclusive groups and had changed the reputation of those colleges therewith.

This trend would continue into the 20^th Century, perhaps reaching its peak in the interwar and post-war periods where even celebrated social commentator E. Digby Baltzell, himself a descendant of a great Philadelphian dynasty, had observed that by 1940 Haverford College and Swarthmore College were considered to be amongst the top five most prestigious tertiary institutions in all of America, eclipsing the reputation of larger research universities and many Ivy League colleges (see ‘The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy & Caste in America‘. These two selective liberal arts colleges were held in high esteem alongside the likes of Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University and occasionally Union College (which for much of its history was amongst the Big Four alongside Harvard, Yale, and Princeton)

Bryn Mawr College became one of the Seven Sisters, forming a loose consortium with equally prestigious women’s colleges such as Barnard College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Vassar College. These were the preferred academic destinations for highborn young women and formed a key party of the Ivy-hopping circuit where young men would visit from peer institutions which included many of what became the Ivy League, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Swarthmore College, Colgate University, Haverford College, Union College and the various NESCAC colleges amongst others.

The below illustration is a perfect representation of this practice. The map titled ‘World of Ivy‘ was published in a 1958 edition of the “Ivy Magazine”, submitted by a student at Columbia – David Rosand, who would later achieve acclaim as a prominent art historian. The Ivy Magazine was a short-lived periodical published in the 1950s (the first edition being printed in 1956) by Yale undergraduates and circulated amongst the student bodies of the eight Ivy League schools and other select institutions, including those mentioned in the graphic. This piece identifies a number of schools as constituent members of the World of Ivy, including Bryn Mawr, the Seven Sisters and a selection of other prestigious women’s colleges, small and selective liberal arts colleges and Ivy Plus schools. Rosand’s map marks the following institutions: Amherst College, Barnard College, Bennett College, Bennington College, Brown University, Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, Connecticut College, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”), Mount Holyoke College, Pembroke College, Phillips Academy Andover (“Andover”), Phillips Exeter Academy (“Exeter”), Princeton University, Radcliffe College, Sarah Lawrence College, Skidmore College, Trinity College, University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”) Vassar College, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Williams College, and Yale University (shown here as “New Haven, Conn.” with the stylised letter “Y”).

Bryn Mawr also came to be regarded as a sister school to the University of Pennsylvania when it was a male-only institution, but it had long been an active sister school to Haverford and Swarthmore.

Indeed, so close was the relationship between Haverford and Bryn Mawr that they often had shared faculty and cooperated in joint initiatives and academic programmes. They have referred to their relationship as the “Bi-College” relationship for more than a century with co-collegiate programmes and initiatives using the Bi-College banner. The joint student newspaper, the ‘Bi-College News’ has been in circulation since 1909. The two colleges allowed for cross-registration of pupils for courses at the other since at least the 1940s. This relationship came to be cemented as the Bi-College Consortium (commonly abbreviated to “Bi-Co”) when an informal plan for cooperation between the two august institutions was agreed in 1977. The plan was formalised on the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two colleges in 2016. The terms of the consortium agreement are such that the universities have a combined approach to hiring of faculty and academic staff, joint academic programmes, and provisions for cross-registration of students at one another’s institutions, a combined library, access to social events, catering and even residential facilities. Bryn Mawr women are also eligible to participate on Haverford women’s athletic teams. The result is that a number of academic departments are structured to be delivered across both campuses whilst others have non-compete agreements where one or the other college has developed a core strength (such as Haverford’s reputation for fine arts and music whereas Bryn Mawr is renowned for visual, performing and creative arts programmes). The consortium has combined administrative functions that oversee campus security and catering and an integrated transport system that delivers a free shuttle between their respective campuses (the legendary “Blue Bus”). The two colleges also sponsor various co-curricular exercises under the Bi-College title, including music ensembles, a capella groups and sports and social clubs.

This relationship is the basis for the Tri-College Consortium (often referred to as “Tri-Co”) which sees Swarthmore College participate to a lesser extent in many of the same schemes and programmes and the further expansion of the integrated transport service. Students at the three colleges are eligible for cross-registration at no additional cost allowing them to further expand their studies where their home campus may not be able to offer the same opportunities. The three Tri-College members also participate in the Quaker Consortium (“The Quaky”) which expands some of those opportunities to include the University of Pennsylvania, but this is a less formal arrangement.

Both Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College are still regarded as amongst the most prestigious colleges in the United States, attracting the academic cream of the crop from across the world. They still have a reputation as socially exclusive elite colleges but this is an unfair representation of the student body and the huge efforts that they have made to increase diversity and better reflect the communities that they serve. Indeed, they are often celebrated as amongst the most diverse and progressive colleges in North America, albeit that they continue to operate highly selective admissions policies competing against Ivy League and NESCAC colleges for the very best talent. Both are often recognised as “Little Ivies” or “Hidden Ivies”, the liberal arts alternatives to the more famous research universities of the Ivy League.

Both colleges are fully-accredited and in good standing with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). The two Bi-College Consortium members are also part of The Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC), the Annapolis Group of Liberal Arts Colleges, the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC), the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), the Liberal Arts Collaborative for Digital Innovation (LACOL), the Oberlin Group of College Libraries, the Pennsylvania Consortium for the Liberal Arts (PCLA) and the Selective Liberal Arts Consortium (SLAC). These associations represent the pinnacle of the private liberal arts sector in the United States and its membership is comprised of only the very best, peer-approved, selective liberal arts colleges. The two colleges compete in the NCAA affiliated Division III Centennial Conference as their primary athletic conference alongside a number of similar, equally prestigious liberal arts colleges from the Mid-Atlantic region. The two colleges are part of the wider “Ivy Plus” community and participate in various Ivy Plus initiatives under the Ivy Plus consortium banner, including the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium (IPSC) and the Ivy Plus Writing Consortium (IPWC).

If you would like to find out more about the Bi-College Consortium then please get in touch with your preferred member institution as listed below.

If you attended one of the two member schools, we would be very keen to hear about your experience and how the Bi-College Consortium arrangement shaped your time at college. Your insights and stories are extremely helpful for prospective students so our community is very grateful for your taking the time to comment below.