Opinion: Sensational Hampshire College Articles Need Context
Hampshire College. Photo: Hampshire.edu
I have been unafraid to criticize Hampshire College, as shown by articles I have written in the past, but sensational accounts I have read in other publications lack grounding in Hampshire’s history, financial recovery path, and today’s higher education landscape. Recent reports have mentioned that enrollment came in under projections, and one story speculates on increased staff turnover. In actuality, it was Hampshire leadership’s decision to reduce non-faculty staffing levels and their own pay to make the college more sustainable.
Enrollment Has Been Increasing
The enrollment level also needs context. While there has been a shortfall compared to projections, enrollment has actually been increasing yearly since 2020 and is 80% higher than just two years ago. While one article quotes students speculating that they might transfer, there have always been some students who transfer out, and those who transfer in from other institutions. Last year, dozens of students transferred to Hampshire from New College.
Anger and Protest
While Hampshire does need to cut costs, faculty have serious concerns that need to be heard and I hope to write about curricular issues in the future. The administration also overlooks important information from other stakeholder groups, which I detail in The Unmaking of an IT Department: A Cautionary Tale.
Students have valid concerns, yet it’s important to see this in the context of Hampshire’s history. Dissension is as old as Hampshire itself, with essential protests going back to its first years. Student protests led to Hampshire being the first college in the U.S. to completely divest from Apartheid era South Africa. Ironically, one reason Hampshire is still open when many other colleges have closed is that the community’s reservoir of irritation – or even outrage – allowed them to mobilize quickly and overthrow an administration that was dismantling the college.
Compared to the Previous Administration
In the summer of 2018, Mim Nelson, about to start her tenure as president, received the bad news that Hampshire was about 59 students short of expectations. Instead of leveling with the community, cutting costs, and increasing fundraising, her response was to secretly seek merger partners. She later announced that Hampshire might not accept a new class of students, and then laid off much of the admissions and fundraising departments. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, wrote in Fortune that she was “dealt a bad hand, but…just knocked the whole deck of cards off the table in panic.”
Students responded with the second-longest college sit-in in U.S. history, alumni raised money, parents applied pressure, and a re-envisioning coalition responded with an alternate plan. Eventually, the president resigned along with much of the board. The new board and president committed to fundraising to remain an independent institution.
Layers to the Deficit
Saying that Hampshire has been in deficit is misleading without the context that it was always part of the plan to do record-breaking fundraising to offset the operational deficit caused by the need to build back these departments and enrollment. Structural problems existed before 2019, and there have been impacts from the pandemic. In addition, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) debacle has hurt colleges nationwide and resulted in 27% fewer applications. These factors are part of why twice as many colleges are closing this year than last.
Higher Ed Ecosystem and Marlboro Example
Hampshire’s path has been a model that other colleges are learning from. At the same time, I have been sharing lessons learned from Hampshire’s 2019 revolt with five different “save college” movements. One that closed anyway was Marlboro College despite having a much higher endowment-to-student ratio. Marlboro was a tiny college in Vermont that had some similarities in curriculum and community with Hampshire. Loren Pope gave high praise to both schools in his book Colleges that Change Lives. Yet, Marlboro didn’t change its curriculum and cost structure as dramatically as Hampshire.
Why Hampshire is Needed
People going to Hampshire are brave pioneers who choose it over wealthier schools because of its transformational nature and culture. Hampshire is not the right match for everyone, and it has problems. Still, the world needs experimenting colleges, and Hampshire is willing to push the envelope with no grades or majors and a fresh curriculum that has evolved since the 2019 crisis.
The other schools in the Five College Consortium created Hampshire to innovate in ways they could not. Students taking classes through the interchange program was always part of the plan. The book The Making of a College explained that Hampshire wouldn’t duplicate certain areas of instruction. The hardest part of innovation in higher ed is simultaneously controlling costs, and other unique small liberal arts colleges need to learn that, or they will close.
Jonathon Podolsky is a Hampshire alum, activist, and a member of the Education Writers Association. More at www.Podolsky.cc
Thank you, Jonathon, for this detailed informational and for your opinion. During Hampshire’s critical year, five years ago, yours was a very positive voice. As an alum who lives not far from Hampshire College, your perspective continues to be especially valuable.
Thanks for this piece Jonathon.
I graduated from Hampshire in ’88. A time of crisis and rebirth as well. I got and MBA at the Yale School of Management much later and worked with Jeff Sonnenfeld there. Ironically I was visiting Yale one day in 2018 and stopped by Jeff’s office. To my surprise he was just finishing a call with Jimmy Crown. Jeff is the Lester Crown Professor at Yale. Jimmy Crown was, per Jeff, astonished and irate that Miriam Nelson didn’t speak to him, or any other well-known alumni, before or after her decision to essentially shut our school down. Jeff is incredibly well-connected and an authority on organizational leadership – his audience is large and powerful. He was excited to take up Hampshire’s cause. I joked that maybe he could replace Nelson himself.
Scandals and protest have often been to Hampshire’s benefit, with opinion moving from initial outrage at a piece of ‘weird’ news: “Oh those hippie (or ‘commie’) freaks again!”, to others (or even the same people) saying “Hey, just a minute, they’re right!” As the Orange Turd himself has said: “no press is bad press!”