@Mwfan1921, sorry if I misled. I meant that it was good to have a legitimate not-for-profit college in the neighborhood.
Not a closure but Linfield College in Oregon is cutting faculty after a 25% decline in enrollment. They cite themselves as 95% tuition dependenr despite a relatively high ($100 million+) endowment. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/02/11/linfield-college-moving-forward-plan-cut-its-faculty-apparently-or-without
San Francisco Theological Seminary (in Marin County, Calif.) is expected to merge into The University of Redlands (east of L.A.), giving Redlands an academic foothold in northern California. See the following link to view the 2/26/19 Inside Higher Ed article:
A freedom of information act request by a local newspaper has uncovered email messsges between Hampshire College and UMass Amherst regarding a merger.
Here’s an article on that: https://www.wbur.org/edify/2019/02/24/hampshire-college-umass-amherst-potential-partner-emails
Getting 800 acres in Amherst for free and a 50 million endowment would be great for UMass… looks like a great deal for them
College of New Rochelle with work with Mercy College to transfer their students. Great news for students getting transfered there and Mercy which had 11,500 in 2015 students but down to 9000. A nice boast!
I could see a better fit with Amherst and Hampshire.
@MAandMEmom Really? Not me. Yes from a size perspective. But there’s always been a little counter culture vibe to the University.
Perhaps treating it as a separate school within the uni and open to both undergrad and grad populations could save Hampshire.
Also. In my day students were much preppier and huge student/athlete cohort at Amherst than the university. As a rule. But times do change. So you may be right. Time will tell I guess.
Makes me wonder if UMass Amherst could use the Hampshire faculty and staff’s expertise to make their “individual concentration” major program more than a niche thing (as it is most places, especially public colleges, that have it).
I think that if Hampshire could use UMass’s administration for all the things that are costing them so much, it could work. Small colleges have to have counseling and Title IX officers and health care and collection services, etc. There are so many reports to the dept of Ed required. If they could get rid of all those, it might be financially viable to keep the instruction and faculty as it is and move all the administration to UMass.
You’re absolutely right about all the extra stuff required today @twoinanddone. I’m in IT and the mandatory reporting over the last 20 years has increased many fold. Software for managing Titie IX, student conduct, proactive advising, online learning, information security, and so on. Gone are the good old days of simply managing a student information system. Costs for all these voltuntold systems runs in excess of $1m per year.
You’re all probably right about UMass. I guess I’m salty from living in the monster’s shadow all the time.
Yes, a “Hampshire College of UMass” could be more viable as a relative niche program within a big university than it would be as a standalone college that needs to deal with all of the things that a large school needs to deal with.
Also, changes in student demand for the Hampshire program could be handled somewhat more easily by reallocating faculty between Hampshire and the rest of UMass.
Would UCSB’s College of Creative Studies be an analogous model, in terms of housing a niche program at a large university?
Come next recession the list will grow exponentially. These are the best of times right now. Will get much worse.
@MAandMEmom I do not see Amherst having ANY interest. They are pretty disdainful of the rest of the Consortium to start with. It is almost unimaginable to me that they’d have any interest in connecting more formally with Hampshire, especially if Hampshire wants to retain some of their culture. Very different views of the world from those two campuses. And I don’t think Amherst needs to.
“Come next recession the list will grow exponentially. These are the best of times right now. Will get much worse.”
And remember, the baby bust which resulted from the 2008 recession is in the pipeline. There was an op ed about the impact this will have on marginal colleges in the WSJ last week.
Add to that the success and growth of online education/degrees, where student numbers have become quite large. I’m not talking about for-profit schools or MOOCs, but accredited, not for-profits that offer degrees at least partially online. Students at schools like Western Governor, Liberty, ASU, Purdue Global, Southern New Hampshire, are getting good educations and outcomes, all while having flexibility and paying a much lower price than at a traditional four year college.
It’s this perfect storm of relatively high price, declining demographics, and increased competition which will cause difficulties for some traditional colleges (especially those that have fewer students and/or have relatively small endowments). Many schools are attempting to address these issues in their long term strategic plans. For example, ASU is rapidly growing it’s 100% online degrees, UF increasing online classes, and Purdue bought Kaplan last year.
Should be interesting to see how it all shakes out, but college closings will probably increase in the relatively near term, and new business models/partnerships will appear.
A nice compilation: https://www.educationdive.com/news/tracker-college-and-university-closings-and-consolidation/539961/
Interesting list - but Berklee is still alive and kicking, as far as I know…