1 month ago
When Hampshire College enrolled its first people of students successful 1970, it offered a caller breed of wide arts education, 1 gathering each student’s interests and motivations, emphasizing learning crossed disciplines and adjacent relationships pinch teachers.
For nan adjacent 56 years, Hampshire provided conscionable that, becoming a beloved alma mater to scores of unconventional learners who sought, and found, a assemblage acquisition “unlike anyplace other – and dissimilar anyone else’s”, arsenic nan school’s tract still promises to deliver.
“It was nan first clip successful my life wherever I genuinely learned successful school,” said Alec MacLeod, an artist and educator who enrolled pinch nan 2nd people of Hampshire students alongside film-maker Ken Burns. For his elder project, MacLeod invented a fictional country, designing its history and geography, moreover its cuisine and folklore, nether nan guidance of an anthropologist, a philosopher and an artist.
“I can’t ideate I could person done that anyplace else,” he said of Hampshire. “It’s a typical spot wherever typical things tin happen.”
But early students searching for nan imaginative, quirky and occasionally unstructured undergraduate acquisition Hampshire became known for will person to look elsewhere. This week, nan college’s president and committee announced that nan upcoming autumn semester will beryllium Hampshire’s past and that nan schoolhouse will shutter permanently owed to debased enrollment and years-long financial problems. In 2025, nan schoolhouse had group a extremity to enroll 300 students – it sewage astir half that number.
In a statement, nan president and committee wrote that they had near “no chromatic unturned” trying to prevention nan assemblage aft it almost closed six years ago.
“Despite this herculean effort, nan financial pressures connected nan college’s operations person go progressively complex, compounded by shifting outer factors,” they wrote. “We stay unwavering successful our belief that nan acquisition a Hampshire College acquisition provides is precisely what nan world needs.”
Hampshire is hardly nan first institution to autumn to collapsing enrollment amid worsening profession prospects for assemblage graduates, a decades-long situation affecting peculiarly nan humanities and wide arts and nan rise of AI – among deeper societal fractures. Nearly 300 colleges and universities person closed betwixt 2008 and 2023, according to nan Hechinger Report, which tracks nan closures. Dozens of module person been laid disconnected and departments trim aliases consolidated astatine universities ample and small, backstage and public. Even nan country’s astir storied institutions person not been immune. The Trump administration, which has declared US colleges and universities “the enemy”, has waged an unprecedented campaign against them that has only exacerbated nan crisis.
Hampshire administrators said they decided to adjacent now to usage nan school’s past resources to thief students modulation retired of it. Those who are adjacent to finishing their degrees will beryllium capable to enactment done nan fall, while others whitethorn transportation to a number of partner institutions successful Massachusetts and different states.
It’s little clear what will hap to nan school’s astir 250 module members, who were advised to use for unemployment benefits. RL Goldberg, who teaches trans and queer studies there, said module were alert of nan financial woes but were blind-sided by nan announcement.
“A batch of america felt for illustration location was still important clip to people correct,” they told nan Guardian.
The announcement was besides met pinch shock and disbelief from alumni, galore of whom described nan news arsenic “gut wrenching” and “devastating”. As nan tributes flocked in, erstwhile students said of Hampshire arsenic a “magical place” and their clip location arsenic profoundly transformative. “I wouldn’t beryllium who I americium without Hampshire” was a communal refrain. “What a nonaccomplishment for early generations who request it” was another.
The merchandise of a 1958 committee established to “re-examine nan assumptions and practices of wide arts education”, Hampshire offered an experimental pedagogical approach, attracting what nan school’s president called “bold, iconoclastic thinkers”, and encouraging them to creation their ain program and self-evaluate successful spot of accepted grades.
“To cognize is not enough,” nan school’s motto advises, and nan Hampshire acquisition extended acold beyond nan classroom. The assemblage was unabashedly progressive, fostering a socially conscious, advocacy-oriented education, and becoming 1 of nan first successful nan state to require each students to complete organization service. When blimpish legislators successful Florida overhauled nan state’s only nationalist wide arts school, New College of Florida, promising to toggle shape it into a “bastion of conservatism”, Hampshire offered its fleeing students admission.
Hampshire is precisely nan benignant of inclusive, critical-thinking-focused, left-leaning learning institution that nan correct has agelong accused of alleged “wokeism”. Already, blimpish commentators person seized connected nan closure announcement to reason that colleges are responsible for their ain demise.
“Schools for illustration Hampshire College wrote disconnected half of nan state and offered indoctrination complete education,” 1 specified commentator wrote. “Students were offered small much than woke credentials pinch fewer marketable skills aliases demonstrated abilities pinch their degrees. By removing nan ‘anxiety’ of grades and rigorous world standards, nan assemblage became a comfortableness area alternatively than a learning zone.”
Goldberg, nan Hampshire professor, based on nan right’s antagonism against higher acquisition was mostly manufactured, but masked deeper questions astir nan early of universities.
“The truth is, location is [an enrollment] cliff of students who are applying for colleges correct now, location are immense questions astir what a assemblage acquisition is for. People wonder: Why put truthful overmuch money, spell into truthful overmuch debt?” they said. (Hampshire’s tuition runs astir $60,000 a year, excluding housing, though nan schoolhouse says 99% of students person financial aid.) “We’re mired successful this speech astir wokeism, which I don’t deliberation is peculiarly useful to immoderate of america erstwhile our schools are closing, our students person nary clear pathways, they’re successful debt, our teachers are surviving paycheck to paycheck and our workers don’t person immoderate consciousness of stability.”
Burns, who had successful caller years spearheaded fundraising efforts to prevention nan school, told nan New York Times that Hampshire’s closure came astatine a clip “when higher acquisition has been hijacked by nan transactional”.
“A assemblage acquisition is, to some, for illustration a Louis Vuitton handbag,” he added. “And that’s not Hampshire.”
