>Hampshire College Will Close Amid Student Enrollment Declines>Other small private colleges like Hampshire have closed in recent years as financial pressures and competition for students increase.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/us/hampshire-college-closing-amherst-massachusetts-enrollment.html>By Mark Arsenault>April 14, 2026>Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Western Massachusetts, has succumbed to years of financial struggle and will close permanently after the fall semester.>A multiyear effort to refinance debt, raise funds, pursue land development and increase enrollment failed to produce a viable path to saving the 56-year-old college. On Sunday, its board of trustees voted to shut down, according to the school’s president.
>>25210738>Hampshire is the alma mater of the filmmaker Ken Burns, who made his first documentary movie as a student there.>“This is an extraordinary loss for those of us who went there,” Mr. Burns, who graduated from Hampshire in 1975, said in an interview on Tuesday. The school, known for experimentation in classes and methods, offered “sort of medieval guild-like tutors and apprenticeships,” he said.>Hampshire, in Amherst, Mass., joins an epidemic of college closures over the past two decades. More than 300 U.S. colleges and universities closed from 2008 to 2024, according to an analysis by The Hechinger Report.>“I think the reality is that tuition-dependent schools are being buffeted at many levels around a whole bunch of different headwinds,” Hampshire’s president, Jennifer Chrisler, said in an interview.>Many small schools have struggled to enroll students in places facing population declines, a factor in Hampshire’s demise. Hampshire College has about 625 students, Ms. Chrisler said, about half the school’s enrollment in the early 2000s.>Part of Hampshire College’s downfall may also relate to “public discussion in this country about the value of a liberal arts education,” Ms. Chrisler said.>“Some of it is a persistent and ill informed, I think, belief at the federal level that the only value of an education is what you earn four years after your graduation,” she said.>Jeffrey Selingo, an author of several books on higher education, says many small schools in the Northeast and Midwest are facing enrollment problems, as shrinking states produce fewer young people. And since most people go to college within 50 miles of home, schools in shrinking communities often lack a big pool of possible students to draw from, or have to share the pool with other colleges.>“There is a migration away from the small liberal arts schools toward the big public or private research institutions” with more student activities and academic offerings, particularly in business and technology, Mr. Selingo said.>As students become harder to enroll, he said, troubled schools compete by discounting tuition through increased aid. That reduces overall revenue while costs continue to rise, creating a “doom loop” of financial pressures. At the same time, universities regarded as elite and prominent public schools receive way more applications than they could ever accept.>“It’s a bifurcated market between the haves and have-nots,” Mr. Selingo said. “The question is, how many of the have-nots will follow Hampshire?”>From its opening, Hampshire required students to assume responsibility for setting their own academic path. Students focused on individual projects and field work. The school’s philosophy was that it was more important for students to learn to solve intellectual problems than to memorize facts.
>>25210741>Hampshire will not admit a new class for this fall, the college said in a statement. Students in their final year will be eligible to complete their degrees at Hampshire through the end of the fall semester. Other students will receive individualized advice and guidance on transferring to other schools.>Hamish Currie, 23, a Hampshire student in his third year, said news of the school’s closure was stunning, despite the common knowledge that it was struggling financially.>“There have been a lot of cuts but I was operating under the assumption that I would be able to get my final project done and graduate,” he said. Now Mr. Currie, originally from Britain and living in Washington State, is unsure if he will have to transfer.>He studies economics with a focus on railroads, he said. “It’s really sad that I’ve spent all this time working toward this goal and potentially won’t have a chance to complete it.”>Mr. Burns said he decided to attend Hampshire College after a friend showed him a magazine story about the school, which opened in 1970. Mr. Burns arrived in 1971, and said he was an entirely different person by the time he graduated.>“It was just transforming,” he said. “I literally learned everything there — everything.”>He has maintained a connection to the school for more than 50 years, as a donor, a past board member and a famous face in the campaign to try to save the college from financial distress.>Mr. Burns said Hampshire’s demise was because of a shift in American culture, not just demographics.>“It was dedicated to a transformational education, in an era when higher education has been hijacked by the transactional,” he said. “A college education is, to some, like a Louis Vuitton handbag. And that’s not Hampshire.”>Hampshire employs about 250 people. Layoffs will proceed in waves, the school has said. Most employees will end their jobs on June 15. Some staff will remain to complete the fall semester.>Mark Arsenault covers higher education for The Times.
Eh, it was a weird college and a failed experiment, sort of a Waldorf school for 20 year olds vibes, and modern new agey Waldorf at that.
Attended it briefly after working in grounds, the unstructured curriculum led to a paucity of general knowledge courses. You were supposed to abuse the 5 college system to take whatever you wanted @ Amherst and umass, then frankenstein a degree together with the Hampshire system, which is extremely based and I'm sad the place failed. They let a retard like me take music classes at schools id never have gotten into. Delicious raspberries round the dorms, wild onions by the tennis courts. Terrible architecture, generally nice students. Flayvors> Scoops
doesnt really makes sense to study liberal arts ever and go into so much debtjust do engineering and read on your free time
>>25211738It's supposed to be a degree for people who are already wealthy.
>>25211738Dated advice. Study anything they're all equal in terms of employment and if its something you actually care about you'll stand a better chance.
>>25210738American schools (especially private ones) want to act like businesses then complain and act innocent when they go bankrupt.I really don't think it has anything to do with the somewhat unique nature of this school or even liberal arts programs. I think this will be a continuing trend with more schools simply because the economy demands it.As always people fail to recognize that a staunchly capitalist globalized neoliberal system does not evolve into a race to the top, it evolves into a race to the bottom. It happens with everything and that will include schools. Why would students choose to go to a private school for several times the cost but not equivalent value? They simply won't. It's increasingly nonviable and just not smart ironically. Even public schools are struggling to a certain extent due to cost as well as demographics.
>>25211766Noble schools fundamentally cannot exist in a world where everyone is a deluded idiot who thinks college is an investment and must result in employability and businesses demand academic degrees for industrial and service jobs
>>25211738yes, clearly lit demonstrates how well that works.
>>25211738Engineering will turn you into a bug. Anybody attempting to make a practical decision should get an apprenticeship which keeps you active and is much less likely to be undercut by Indians.
>>25211795Larper detected
>>25211780I own a house and had enough saved by 29 to take a year off (halfway through it) and study all the stuff I haven't had time to because I took that route. What have you accomplished?
What happens to the buildings?
>>25211761This is simply not true. I've been involved in hiring decisions where the boomer hiring manager with the final decision was swayed on an entry level position because of the relevance of the candidates' majors more than once.
>>25211771The labor market is too tight for workers and has been for too long. Most of these problems are downstream from labor glut due to trade policy and immigration. That and the fact that academia has failed to keep up with how the world and the country have changed over the past few decades. Failure to do anything about declining male interest in education is big, directly relevant example.
Just learned that the game design college that I toyed with the idea of attending back in high school around '08 and '09 closed its campuses back in 2012.Huh.
>>25211771At a certain point you need some sort of employability unless you're already independently wealthy
>>25210738Good. Too many people go to college.
>>25211823what do liberal arts students even do after they graduate?
>>25211832Get government make work jobs via nepotism.
>>25211802Lol stfu, poindexter
>>25211832Depends on the major. I have a BS in Economics that was in the liberal arts college of my school and I'm an analyst at a large company. Obviously getting a liberal arts degree from a better school opens up more options. Writers for shows generally have English degrees, but you're not going to be writing a Netflix show with a degree from West Shitsberg Community College. If you get a masters or phd you can generally find a job as a specialist in your field but it might not pay enough to even make it worth it
>>25211771You'd have a point if the income disparities weren't so large and getting larger. Study your first choice and spend the rest of your life around niggers until your inevitable shanking, well I sure hope youre left wing.
sad to see. i went there for 3 years. low retention, fair number of druggie burnouts, but in general a brilliant population of eccentric kids and a spectacular party scene. i hope someone someday figures out how to run a college without 80% of the budget going to administration.
>>25210738>financial pressures and competition for students increasemaybe decrease tuition for the first time in your existence?
where will the hamsters learn to run on the wheel now..
>>25211801I have an engineering degree and worked in it for a decade before switching to a related trade because desk work was withering my body and mind. It‘s funny that you just threw this nonsense phrase out because you saw it as an easy reply with no need to elaborate into a coherent position.
>>25210738you go to college because thats where the college girls are and they go because thats where college men are. but colleges have completely undermined marriage so theres no purpose to going. in addition you learn about the Bible from pastor andersons podcast and learn about math from an llm. so there is no purpose to going to any colleges other than harvard and yale. the professors only have themselves to blame
>>25211802Starting salary for engineers outside of especially high living cost areas is around 60k before taxes and deductions. You may have leveraged a few extra thousand toward the end but 29 is roughly the earliest time you‘ll be considered for Engineer II. If you worked sevenish years at that rate the only way I see it amounting to house money is if you bought a fixer-upper, "own" it in the sense that you‘re still paying a mortgage, stayed at home for several years to cut costs, or worked contract jobs where 70-100 hour weeks are standard. In any case, if you bought it at around the start of your career that involved taking a big gamble that you wouldn’t have to move and also stuff like taking a year off is heavily frowned-on and tends to get you passed over for hiring or promotions moving forward. None of which is to critique your choices but there is a 0% chance that what you‘re describing is true with a regular full time job and no strings attached.
>>25210738>>25210738At least the Five College Federal Credit Union won't have to change its acronym
This is very much a trend that will keep happening. Most smaller colleges are going to close, especially private ones. Especially liberal arts sadly. The only colleges that will weather this storm are prestigious institutions and big public universities. Community colleges should be safe as long as they're the ones focusing on trades. The sad fact is that there's too many colleges in America. The smaller ones will be pushed out. Public ones will also probably have to merge with bigger colleges.
>>25211809Probably sold off. Hampshire is one of the Five Colleges (Also including UMass Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, and Smith) nearby. The campus will probably be sold to one of them and they'll make into a branch campus or just straight up sell the buildings to be torn down and turned into condos.
>>25212977>The only colleges that will weather this storm are prestigious institutions and big public universitiesdont forget the pajeet schools abusing the immigration system
>>25211738What if you're bad at math like me?
