A reporter from the Financial Times visited Phillips Academy to take a tour of the campus and to conduct interviews with administrative heads for an upcoming article about the school. The Financial Times will feature Phillips Academy in a report about three preparatory schools around the world: Andover, Eton College in Windsor, England, and Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. Though Phillips Exeter Academy was the original suggestion for the American prep school, Victoria Griffiths, the journalist covering this section of the series, suggested that Andover would be interesting because of notable alumni such as former President George H. W. Bush ’42 and President George W. Bush ’64. Ms. Griffiths came to campus last Wednesday and interviewed several faculty members, including Head of School Barbara Chase, Dean of Faculty Temba Maqubela, and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Carter. She also toured campus with three students, and was very impressed by the school grounds. “It looks more like a college than a prep school, which is what you would expect from an elite school like Phillips Andover,” she said. The article she is writing includes historical facts about the Academy, information and anecdotes about notable alumni such as Humphrey Bogart, and future goals of the school, particularly those pertaining to student diversity. “It’s a challenge on the part of the institution to make sure that you are truly diverse and also that everyone is getting as much as they can from the education,” said Ms. Griffiths. Ms. Griffiths does not want the article to simply focus on Andover; instead, she wants to show how education has evolved throughout the world. “The article is an overview, but its main point is how much Phillips Andover has changed and how these changes reflect society,” said Ms. Griffiths. “I hope that [the article] is not exclusively about Phillips Academy, but that our readers will take from it educational trends, as well,” she continued. When asked about the article’s relevance in a publication mainly about business and finance, Ms. Griffiths referred to the school’s immense endowment and said, “[Andover] is a mini-business in itself, or not so mini I should say.” Also last week, a Newsweek reporter conducted a phone interview with Dean of Admission Jane Fried. According to Ms. Griffiths, the simultaneous interest of both famed publications was coincidental. The Financial Times originally choose to do the article because they felt that their audience is one that would be very interested in the educational transformations of these three globally-recognized preparatory schools. The article, which will be about 1200-1400 words, will appear in the next couple of weeks in the Financial Times newspaper and also on the publication’s website. The Financial Times is a newspaper based in London, England that covers events pertaining to the global economy. Victoria Griffiths is the only Boston-based journalist for the Financial Times. She has done several profiles of universities, including MIT and Harvard, but the article about Andover is her first secondary school profile.
