The recession is hitting more than students’ wallets these days. At Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, Ga., the students are feeling the strain. This small, Christian college of about 1,100 students recently announced to its undergraduates that it was going to eliminate 50 percent of its majors due to “significant financial stress of the current national economy,” according to BPC President David Smith.

In his letter to the student population, Smith brought up euphemisms like “discontinue” and justifications through financial jargon. After several paragraphs detailing the financial reasons for the “discontinuation” of over half of the college’s majors, Smith ended with something that sounded quite like an administrator on the defense:

“You will either determine that you can move forward toward excellence in a changed environment, or you can succumb to an attitude of defeat, blame, and cynicism.”

There was not one sentence in this letter that talked about how this change would affect students in the long run of their education or exactly what majors were eliminated. In fact, all it says is, “possibly yours [major] is one of those affected.”

I couldn’t find one mention in this letter about how it will affect the students or whether they even spoke with students prior to making this decision. The majors being eliminated weren’t even listed. Students had to look them up themselves to find out.

Now you’re probably thinking, what does this college have to do with me or Georgia Southern? Well, amidst all the budget cuts, furloughs, and hiring freezes here at GSU, we’re actually growing. We just topped 19,000 students, and several departments actually added a new graduate degree recently, one of which is the College of Business Administration. Not only that, but as a student body at GSU, we get incredible opportunities to give the university administration input on who we think should lead our school as the next president—something that speaks volumes about the way our institution is run.

So how do we relate? Well, for the most part, we are polar opposites: public versus a private institution, medium versus small, growing versus stagnant. Most importantly though, is not how different GSU is in the obvious ways, but how different we are in some of the more subtle ways.

In a climate where education is the most expensive it has been ever, according to CNNmoney.com, and students are taking out loan after loan for their undergraduate education alone, GSU has actually been rated to have some of the best colleges for the best value in the country by Kiplinger Magazine. Even the Princeton Review rated GSU as one of the top 301 schools in the country and cited its value as one of the determining factors.

What all this means is that we are fortunate to be in an institution that is continuing to make incredible strides academically and otherwise. According to recent releases, the fall 2009 freshman class had an average SAT score of over 1,100 and an average GPA of over 3.0, compared to just three years ago when the average SAT score was still in the lower one-thousand range.

Not only are we growing academically, but we are growing substantially in new construction and quality resources for students and faculty. Hendricks Hall’s renovation into a top-of-the-line lab for the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health will be opening in fall of next year, Centennial Place has some of the most advanced features of any residence halls out there and GSU is getting ready to release its strategic plan with a host of improvements and construction projects that will be accomplished in the next decade alone.

So here we are, at a moment in time when a recession has been barraging the nation for over two years now, but we are fortunate enough to be growing, succeeding and thriving here at GSU. And now, as we usher in a new university president in January of this year, we will be witnesses to some more positive changes that will continue to allow our university to thrive when so many, such as Brewton-Parker College, are not.

I’m thankful for that, but I am also aware that we are part of an incredible institution that continues to change and grow in new and exciting ways constantly. While some colleges are cutting staff, resources and majors, GSU is taking the challenges of the recession head-on and preserving its staff, campus and resources and continuing to put the student first, carving a successful niche into the ever-changing college landscape.