Goucher College is a great school ? if you can afford it.
Tuition and fees at the small liberal arts college, tucked away on a 287-acre wooded campus in Towson, are approaching $42,000 a year.
But that hasn?t stemmed the buzz about the school, which enrolls close to 290 Marylanders among its 1,450 students.
“[Everyone] I talked with during my visit, whether history, dance, theater, philosophy, teacher-education majors or athletes, said [attending Goucher] was a choice they would make again,” wrote Loren Pope in his book “Colleges That Change Lives.”
So what makes Goucher so special?
President Sanford Ungar says it?s the programs, combined with Goucher?s unique emphasis on an international education.
“I don?t want students to pick Goucher because they got to ?G? in the alphabet,” Ungar said.
The college offers close to 30 majors and programs, including options like Peace Studies and a popular creative-writing program headed by poet Elizabeth Spires and her husband, novelist Madison Smartt Bell.
Goucher also has become one of the first colleges in the nation to make studying abroad mandatory. Students can fulfill the requirement with an intensive three-week course or with semesterlong and yearlong programs.
But students say it?s the people there that make Goucher great.
“You are friends with everyone,” said 22-year-old English major Paul DesMarais, a Towson resident. “You know every single person just walking to class.”
Goucher?ssticker price may be shocking, but there is good news on the financial front. About 90 percent of the students receive some type of financial assistance in the form of need-based aid, student loans, merit-based aid or work study. According to the college, the average aid awarded is about $19,800 per year.
