Smith College boosts diversity with financial aid

This is one of a series of interviews in which Kim Hoo-ran, editor-at-large at The Korea Herald, speaks with leaders, trailblazers, unsung heroes and both well- and lesser-known figures who share the stories of their lives and their visions for a better world — Ed.

In today’s increasingly specialized work environment, many may question the relevance of a liberal arts education which focuses on critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and effective communication over training in specialized skills.

For Sarah Willie-LeBreton, the 12th president of Smith College, a small liberal arts college for women founded in 1871 in Northampton, Massachusetts, the reasons for its relevance are clear.

Discussing how liberal arts is more relevant now than ever in the age of artificial intelligence, Willie-LeBreton said during a March 6 interview with The Korea Herald in Seoul that “AI will get smarter before it gets wiser.”

“We really need students who’ve had exposure to history, to anthropology, to ethics; who’ve had the opportunity to spend three or four years growing their judgment and their experiences with students around the country and the world,” she said. “There simply is no technological substitute for that.”

Liberal arts education trains students in collaboration, research, thinking on one’s feet and adapting to workplaces, all qualities required in today’s work environment, she added. “It’s liberal arts training that is going to best prepare students for the world,” she said.

“If they have taken courses in all of the disciplines, if they have spent time thinking about their responsibility to each other and what it means to invent and create technology that’s responsive to the human condition, then they are going to be not only financial assets to whatever company or industry they get into, but they’re going to be moral and ethical assets, too,” she said, emphasizing “we need that kind of leadership very, very much.”

For those who doubt the place of a women’s college, Willie-LeBreton highlights the need for more women in leadership.

“A great deal of educational research has shown that when people are in the majority in the classroom, they develop a sense of confidence about their abilities that is undermined when they are the minority in the classroom,” she said. "That confidence is a building block for their ability to learn more and stay curious and find their voices and assume those voices.”

“Given that women have as much, if not more, to give than men, why not educate them to their potential so that they can help in figuring out the solutions to the world’s problems?” Willie-LeBreton said, noting the extraordinary lack of women among the leadership seeking solutions to today’s pressing issues.

“The way to get those women to the table is twofold: give them pathways to get there, but also help them find their voices,” she said.

At a time of increasing polarization and wealth gap, there is an even greater need for diversity, equity and inclusion on campus.

Decades of education research has revealed that, on average, young children have the same IQ, Willie-LeBreton explained. “What happens over time, depending on your experiences, is that the IQs diverge. And we can see that those have everything to do with opportunities for people.”

Referring to educational scholar Howard Gardner, who said that there are at least five types of intelligence and that we have a different combination of these intelligences, she said, “If we appreciate that, then we will stop being so defensive and so arrogant about the kind of intelligence that we have and realize that we need somebody else’s intelligence.”

That awareness is behind the push for diversity on US campuses. “If we’re really seeing ourselves as knowledge producers, then we can’t exclude whole groups of people because of the group they belong to,” she said.

Smith College is walking the talk when it comes to diversity and accessibility.

While it is an expensive school, it is also a leader in the affordability of undergraduate education.

With tuition of more than $70,000 and housing and meals reaching nearly $25,000 in the 2026-27 academic year, Smith College may seem out of reach for many families.

However, the “Next 150” pledge announced last year takes effect this fall. The initiative eliminates tuition for families with annual income of up to $150,000 and families with demonstrated need, making Smith College more accessible to a diverse population.

That support applies to all current students and all domestic and international students who are admitted. In 2022, the college also eliminated loans from aid packages, replacing them with Smith grants, meaning students graduate without debt.

“There were a number of similar announcements made at the same time but what’s distinctive is that Smith College is the only school to say tuition-free for families with annual income of up to $150,000, for international students and for current students, and no loans,” Willie-LeBreton said.

“When you put all those four together, we have the most capacious and generous financial aid package for our students.”

About 12 percent of Smith College’s more than 2,500 undergraduate students come from 67 other countries, further adding to the diversity on campus.

“We were very close to this already and what the ‘Next 150’ pledge did was just make it very clear to everybody that we meet all demonstrated need. It wasn’t a hard lift for us to do this,” Willie-LeBreton said, noting that the college spent more than $100 million in financial aid, accounting for about a third of its operating budget. The college's endowment of $2.7 billion makes such generous financial aid packages possible.

“Two-thirds of our students are financially aided. A fifth of our students are completely (aided),” said Willie-LeBreton, noting the importance of graduating without debt so that students are not limited in their life choices.

The college's initiatives do not end at student support: It is one of just a handful of schools converting completely to geothermal energy.

In May 2022, Smith College broke ground on a bold geothermal campus energy product that will reduce the college’s carbon emissions by 80 percent and have it become carbon neutral by 2030. The project, expected to be completed by 2028, will replace the steam heating system with a state-of-the-art electrically powered geothermal system, allowing the college to achieve its carbon-neutral goal almost entirely through a reduction in on-site fossil fuel combustion.

“Very few places can afford to have made this kind of investment and it’s a significant one. But these are where our values are and we’re willing to not build a whole lot of other things over the next 10 years in order to make this one of our priorities,” Willie-LeBreton said.

The largest capital project in the history of the college, the project will represent between 35 percent to 40 percent of the college’s capital expenditures over the next decade, according to the college.

In 2019, Smith College divested completely from investments in fossil-fuel-specific asset managers.