Hampshire College’s finances are not horrible based on Forbes’ assessment & assignment of a grade of “C+” as there are many colleges & universities which received lower financial ratings from Forbes.
Hampshire College appears to be making this move at this time in order to change the mission & the culture of the school.
People blaming parents and suggesting they should have known the school was closing are suffering from a hindsight bias; something hard to avoid unless you are vigilantly guarding against cognitive biases. They think they would not have made the same choice had they been in the OP’s position. It’s a well known phenomenon. But it is pretty absurd. The closing of a college is a highly unusual event.There is no reason to believe that any parent would have predicted the outcome. Many schools have low retention and completion rates for years and years and remain open. When we have all the facts, we tend to believe we would have made a “smarter” choice then others. Yes, it’s true that most schools that close have had retention issues but it is also true that most schools that have retention issues do not close.
Any student who applied to the school ED was screwed. The situation they find themselves in now was not their fault.
@dadof2d The “reputation for high drug use” is a red herring. As the parent of children who went to 2 different Ivies, there is significant (i.e., substantial) drug use at all of them. Both my children said that the recreational use of drugs was common. Hampshire isn’t unique in that regard.
@lostaccount Thank you for saying that… My kid was an ED acceptance and Ive been punishing myself a bit for not seeing this coming ahead of time. Not all kids are a good fit fit for the Ivies with their huge endowments or the big state schools. At least Hampshire handled this all sooooooo poorly that it has made it easier for for my daughter to mentally make a clean break and start to get excited about other schools. Thanks again for your thoughtful defense of us “dummies” 
Hampshire is clearly trying to do a better job of explaining their situation. I got this email yesterday:
Dear Hampshire Students, Parents, Colleagues, Alums, Friends,
I’m writing to share with you some briefs that detail the factors weighed by the Board in reaching its decision Friday to admit only a small class of students this fall. The first document is a presentation I delivered last Thursday to an assembly of faculty, staff, and trustees. Titled “Hampshire’s Fiscal Reality: 1965-2019,” it summarizes the College’s historical financial hurdles, includes a timeline of developments from 2017 to the present, and concludes with details of our current fiscal and budget realities. A second document, “Board Briefing Packet 01-30-19,” shared last week with a campus committee of faculty and staff, gives context on state regulations currently under consideration but not enacted, and accreditation standards that went into effect July 1, 2016. In addition, today Hampshire published its financial statement for Fiscal Year 2018, a report published every year at this time.
We’ll continue to update you as we have new information. Our resources site can be found here: http://updates.hampshire.edu.
Sincerely,
Miriam Nelson
President
I read over all the briefing documents, trying to understand why Hampshire decided to take the actions they’ve chosen at this time (only accepting a small incoming class). It would appear to me that they were in part driven by Massachusetts’ decision to investigate colleges that have closed recently, to determine if they defrauded incoming students. The documents also contain Hampshire’s history of financial struggles, which have been ongoing for decades. Heck, they started out $15 million in the hole! For all those out there implying that families of incoming or current students did not conduct due financial diligence, I would respond that Hampshire’s current financial situation does not appear to be terribly different from the other occasions when they took drastic steps (dipping into endowment assets, cutting salaries, reducing retirement contributions, decreasing admission selectivity).
@ALF: Could you elaborate on your statement: “It would appear to me that they were in part driven by Massachusetts’ decision to investigate colleges that have closed recently to determine if they defrauded incoming students.”
Rfm512. Hi…Hampshire recruitment advisor and others can help with expediting Sarah Lawrence review…after carefully reviewing Sarah Lawrence my granddaughter made it it her new first choice…she explained this to both Hampshire admissions and The Sarah Lawrence admissions…she also went for a SL visit last week…she felt very vulnerable getting excited once again, but overcame this and sent a beautiful well written essay describing her angst reticence and ultimate resiliency in hoping once again for acceptance to a college she aspired to. Today, she received an acceptable financial package from SL and is looking forward to attending. I believe that with some parental, and or Hampshire intervention …you may be able to”fast track” your daughters SL application…particularly if it is her first choice…ps. I have researched the curriculum at SL and find it remarkable…and in some ways similar to Hampshire…
Hope this helps…let me know if you need any particular information.
I took a very quick look at Hampshire’s income statement; see p. 4 here: https://www.hampshire.edu/sites/default/files/businessoffice/files/HampshireCollegeGAAP.pdf
Average 2018 tuition discount is 46.2%. In 2017 it was 42.7%.
2018 administrative costs represented 40.0% of combined administrative and instructional and related costs.
Administrative costs increased 7.3% in 2018. Instructional and related costs increased 0.9%.
@voyager24 : I did a quick check of Sarah Lawrence’s financial rating & graduation & retention rates. Looks like a fairly healthy profile, although one reviewer noted several years ago that “Sarah Lawrence College needs every tuition dollar it can get” when discussing merit scholarship awards.
I view, on limited information, Hampshire College’s action as a financially responsible decision akin to a GM plant closure for retooling. Although not in desperate condition financially, the board saw the future & wanted to act in a proactive & responsible manner.
My best guess is that there will be many more small college closures over the next decade due to financial concerns.
Net tuition and fees in 2018 were down 8.3% compared with 2017.
@voyager24 Thanks so much for the extra information! My daughter’s principal and college counselor have been in touch with Sarah Lawrence on her behalf. We are from New Mexico and were planning on visiting campuses again once we had heard from those schools she was accepted to after her hurried applications following the shocking Hampshire news. She’s never seen the SL campus and though it definitely appears to be the best fit on paper, she does not want to commit to SL being her first choice without at least visiting. I think your advice of a personal letter might be a wonderful idea though! I know Hampshire must be in dire financial straits, but I also know there HAD to be a much better way to have handled the situation regarding the ED students.
@rfm512 Great, the campus is beautiful…my granddaughter would be willing to talk to your daughter about Hampshire/Sarah Lawrence if you think it would help.
I think it’s pretty 'transparent" here that this is a manufactured crisis. By refusing to accept a full classes tuition is to guarantee a financial disaster when you are 100 % reliant upon it. In her 100 day message as the new Dean of Hampshire, she sets this plan in motion. Most new Dean’s would just be learning their new secretary’s names by then. Perhaps this plan was set in motion prior to Ms. Nelson. Perhaps she was hired to implement this plan…This “transparent” plan .
As for the future of the greatest experiment in education in the last half century, the future is grim. Not for the money makers but for education as a whole. Mt. Ida and Wheelock were real estate deals in urban Boston. The only thing Hampshire has to sell is their legitimacy as a well respected educational institution. Therefore, I can see that it is very likely that their new partner will exploit that about them. Perhaps the new Online Nightmare will use Hampshire’s progressive format and no grades, tests and scores to kick out hundreds of thousands of worthless degrees.I can jsee them using out the likes of Ken Burns, Jon Krakauer and the other great artists and thinkers molded by Hampshire’s amazing experience and likening their Hampshire to theirs !They are smart to wait until June 1st to make this dreadful announcement because the campus will be clear of protesters, in the true spirit of Hampshire.Also, with a tiny, non-existant class of 2023, there will be lless and less kids to care.
It isn’t like Krakauer or Burns wouldn’t speak up if they felt like a new “partnered” school didn’t meet with their approval.
Once the deal has been signed, sealed and delivered and then announced on June 1st, I’m sure Ken Burns will use this shocking outcome to do a six segment PBS series called “The Death of Progressive Education” Without any regard for doing things with the Hamphire Spirit in mind…Not hosting a charette to gain insight and ideas, is to defy everything that progressive education stands for.
@ProgressiveParent – I find the posts too cynical and not accurate.
@Dustyfeathers I agree that the comments above are probably too harsh, but I must say that as the parent of an ED student who received the contract sent to ED students late last Friday night - that the language definitely made it feel as though they really did not want the ED students to sign… After the two endless weeks of waiting and anxiety for these kids, the vague legalese making sure Hampshire would promise NOTHING to an incoming class was almost cruel. The only upside for our daughter was that the contract was “so bad” that she was finally able make the mental pivot away from Hampshire… If that was their goal, they succeeded wildly.
I expect that was their goal.
I love the spirit evidenced in the above posts by @ProgressiveParent. But here is the reality. Hampshire has failed. Full stop. Its model doesn’t work in today’s marketplace of ideas.
If Hampshire were unique and attractive enough, it should be able simply to raise tuition and right its financial ship. If competitive factors out there impose effective price constraints on that course of action, it could simply cut costs through voluntary or more coercive salary cuts.
If neither of those approaches (or a combination thereof) can work, then it’s time to close up shop. This will have the effect of freeing up resources so that they can be better deployed elsewhere. Call it “creative destruction,” in the Schumpeterian sense, or reflect on Bakunin’s “the urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” but the end result is the same: a necessary winnowing.
@ProgressiveParent I have literally no dog in this hunt, but for the record she’s Dr. Nelson, and she’s the President of the College, and most college presidents get a lot more done in their first 100 days than learn their admin assistant’s name.