New college was originally a private school.
@TomSrOfBoston UMass has a medical school. It is in Worcester. Are you saying that they would have a second one?
@me29034 Yes. UMass Amherst wants to have its own medical school in western Massachusetts. The existing UMass Medical school in Worcester is a separate institution
What are the chances that UMass would build a tech campus in general? This seems to be a trend in big unis.
- Columbia used eminent domain to take over a largely industrial area north of 125th Street in Manhattan to build a campus that integrates technologies. https://manhattanville.columbia.edu/
- Cornell has built a campus on Roosevelt Island for a similar type of campus, after winning a bid under Mayor Bloomberg -- the partner is Technion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Tech
- NYU is hangering to take over Governors Island in the Harbor -- so far those attempts have been thwarted. We'll see how long that lasts.
*hankering.
Typo
Seems like the most obvious merger would be for Hampshire to become a division of UMass. That could still allow for students in that division to study a curriculum like what Hampshire has now. Changes in demand become easier to manage when instructional resources are shared with the much larger UMass liberal arts departments.
But then demand may fall because out of state students may be less likely to afford it, and Massachusetts may not be a big enough state to add much in state demand.
Although I suspect that a merger is already in serious negotiations, if not then look for the money. For example, would Harvard University with its $36 Billion endowment have an educational use for acquiring Hampshire College. Any Chinese interests ?
There is substantial consumer ( both employer & student) demand for undergraduate business schools which offer CS/technology/data analytics majors.
The thread sent me to Google to google “Famous Hampshire Alums” and in addition to those @anon145 mentioned, I noted Jon Krakauer, Liev Schreiber, and others including a physicist and the founder of Stonybrook Farms yogurt. I remember visiting when we were touring with S&D (HS 2014). We’d gone to Amherst and UMass and took the Hampshire tour, too. It was definitely unique. Here’s hoping they find a match and can continue evolving.
Very sad news. Hampshire is a unique and fascinating college with such a special model of education and grading.
I had to forward the article to a friend whose child is a high school junior, because I have often recommended Hampshire to friends whose children march to a different drummer, and I had done so for her. Her daughter would have loved Hampshire.
Hampshire also was one of the best ‘safety’ choices out there for top students who favor small liberal arts colleges—you could get into it more easily than into Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith, yet you could take multiple courses at any of those top colleges! My husband and I both had thought my son should visit it when he visited Amherst, but he did not agree, I think because of its social culture (he also ruled out Bard and Sarah Lawrence, which are similar). However, he was interested in taking some courses at Hampshire if he had gone to Amherst instead of Williams; in particular, there was a professor researching dogs who interested him.
It was a truly unique college option. I hope that its overall personality and spirit is preserved in the new partnership.
Also among notable alumns–John Falsey (Hampshire '75) who just passed away this month and was creator of the groundbreaking TV series St Elsewhere and Northern Exposure.
In an above post, I asked if there might be any Chinese interest in acquiring Hampshire College. Currently the Chinese government funds schools around the US to teach language & culture. Why not create a Chinese Institute on the current site of Hampshire College ? It would serve both US & Chinese students who wish to assimilate in each other’s culture. Spend two years here studying language, culture & diplomacy, then spend two years in Beijing & Shanghai, for example, in China. Chinese students would also rotate countries annually or just spend two years at a time.
Time that we accept China’s economic & soon-to-be military superpower status in the world.
I envision this as a Chinese Government funded institute of higher learning.
I think Hampshire is hoping to find someone that will help them retain some of their current culture and approach. Some of these proposals are just selling the land and facilities to a buyer, or completely toss out the ideas that Hampshire considers basic to what they’ve been focused on for many years. Those options that have nothing to do with how Hampshire works now are probably a last resort and not what they are hoping for.
@intparent: While I agree with your post, I am also curious as to which option would be more beneficial to the Five College Consortium.
And the timing is right as the US is seeking more Chinese investment & the Chinese Government seems willing to invest more.
Soon, Hampshire College might be making plans for expansion if this comes to fruition.
Well… the consortium doesn’t actually own Hampshire (or its current endowment). I assume the consortium has some kind of legal agreement between the colleges (the 5Cs in Claremont, where one of my kids went, definitely does). But I’d assume none of them wanted to give much control to the others regarding what type of institution they choose to be in the long run, so I kind of doubt that the agreement is very restrictive. Maybe options to stay or go in the consortium, depending on what happens to the colleges within the consortium. You’d sort of assume they “re-up” their participation annually or every couple of years in a legal sense. But I suppose there are options that could play out where Hampshire partners with someone outside the consortium, and for some reason they end up leaving the consortium. I guess we’ll see.
Anyone besides me old enough to remember the SNL skit with Jimmy Fallon and Horacio Sanz that was supposed to be about 2 guys filming a tv show in their Hampshire dorm room http://snl.wikia.com/wiki/Jarret%27s_Room. I think it was after Wayne’s world, with mike Myers.
I remember “Jarret’s Room” well. My favorite part was the DJ with the English accent, who was actually from 'Jersey. While funny, I’m thinking that “Jarret’s Room” probably just helped the general public maintain their image of Hampshire as a bunch of indolent potheads.
Washington State has The Evergreen State College (https://www.evergreen.edu/), which was launched at about the same time as Hampshire, and is also part of the ‘New College’ movement. If you went there, you would definitely get a Hampshire ‘vibe’ from the place, between the unfortunate '70s architecture, to the large forested campus, to the iconoclastic students. While not affiliated with any of Washington’s universities, TESC is a standalone state-funded 4-year college, with about twice the enrollment of Hampshire, so it wouldn’t be totally crazy to imagine the state of Massachusetts, or UMass specifically, to step in and assume ownership/administration.
TESC has survived all these years relatively intact, which is amazing to me, considering the campus is less than a half-hour drive from the state capitol. It has always been easy for conservative legislators to go on campus to decry Washington’s purported misallocation of taxpayer money to support students who they probably view as refugees from “Jarret’s Room”. I only point this out to note that for the same 50-ish years, Evergreen has managed to maintain a New-College-style curriculum even though it is a state-supported college. So, if Evergreen can do it, perhaps Hampshire could too.
Andover Newton Seminary which merged with Yale sold their campus in Newton Centre to a foundation back by Gerald Chen (gave Harvard 350 million). also the foundation bought Hebrew College campus. Most likely to build a private boarding school.
In New Hampshire Chester college and Daniel Webster campuses were bought by Chinese investors as well as Dowling in NY and to my surprise Bay State College and the most heated one right now is Westminister Choir College in NJ
Hampshire was born in a cultural era when the best potential realities seemed possible – an era in which utopian visions were popular as expressed in books such as Small is Beautiful, Walden Two and The Teachings of Don Juan; maverick psychologist B. F. Skinner made the cover of Time; and, on a collegiate level, other experimentally oriented schools such as Kirkland, Franconia and UC–Santa Cruz were also founded. If the country were to lose Hampshire, some of the remnants of its visionary era would be lost with it.
I really like The Evergreen State College analogy and model and hope that UMass could see the upside of incorporating Hampshire as a unique UMass campus that maintained the 5C consortium relationships.
Evergreen State’s curriculum is different from Hampshire’s curriculum. Specifically, it is a completely open curriculum for the BA degree: https://evergreen.edu/registration/degrees
It also apparently markets itself to non-traditional students and degree completers, for whom the completely open curriculum can make things simpler, and who may find the evening and weekend courses more suitable for some schedules: https://evergreen.edu/eveningweekend
Regarding the latter aspect, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/05/26/celebrating-one-colleges-success-enrolling-and-graduating-veterans-essay indicates that 5.2% of Evergreen State’s undergraduates are military veterans. That may give the school some political cover against conservative complaints about being a school for left-wing pothead hippies or whatever.
But yes, that does mean that if Hampshire is turned into a standalone state university and remodeled on Evergreen State lines, that would be a significant curricular change.