AMHERST — Last spring, Gabrielle Wenners’ world was turned upside down when officials at Mount Ida College, where she was a sophomore, suddenly announced that the college was shutting down.
When people ask Wenners about the experience, she jokingly asks those people if they are familiar with the five stages of grief. “Well picture that in 30 minutes,” she tells them. “That was all the time I had to properly process everything.”
Mount Ida’s decision drew ire from state officials and students who were soon without a school after the University of Massachusetts Amherst purchased it to use as a kind of satellite campus.
The Mount Ida affair now casts a long shadow over the world of small private colleges, many of which also face financial straits. When Hampshire College announced on Tuesday that it is seeking a “strategic partnership” amid money troubles, many who spoke to the Gazette said it was clear that the college was taking the opposite approach, preferring transparency to the secrecy and abruptness that defined Mount Ida’s closure.
“I think that the very messy Mount Ida closing really challenged the sector to say, ‘We have to do better than this,’” said Richard Doherty, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, or AICUM — a trade group lobbying on behalf of the state’s private colleges.
The future is unknown for Hampshire College, but as small colleges face similar struggles both regionally and nationally, some recent partnerships provide possible clues for what might be in store for Hampshire.
Across the region, small colleges are struggling as competition increases, and enrollment and tuition revenue decline. And the problem is not unique to New England. A report that the ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service released in July found that one in five small private colleges faces significant financial stress, and that private colleges are closing at a rate of 11 per year. Hampshire College officials this week said the college has no intention of closing.
In Massachusetts — the only state in the country where more students attend private colleges than public — there have been several prominent examples of colleges and universities merging.
One local example that Hampshire College President Miriam “Mim” Nelson pointed to is the merger between Wheelock College and Boston University in 2017, saying that relationship is one that Hampshire might want to emulate.
In fact, AICUM actually held a talk last fall during which Boston University’s president and Wheelock’s former president shared with other college officials how they conceived of and completed their merger.
“We did it in part to give folks sort of the freedom to start exploring possibilities like that,” Doherty said.
But despite college officials calling that merger successful, there were still problems that arose when Boston University essentially absorbed Wheelock. For one, 111 Wheelock staff and faculty members were laid off as a part of that deal.
“The vast majority of the [Wheelock] faculty lost their jobs,” said Matt Dauphin, the higher education field services coordinator at SEIU Local 509 — the union representing certain faculty members at Boston University. “Pretty much the only people who were kept on were those who already had tenure.”
Dauphin said adjunct professors at Boston University — whose jobs are already precarious and low-paid — were also hit financially by the merger.
“The people at BU, especially adjuncts, lost classes and lost income,” he said. “We’re still trying to determine the extent of the repercussions.”
Potential job losses will certainly be a concern for some at Hampshire as the school’s future remains uncertain.
“We’re just kind of waiting to see what shakes out,” said Ethan Snow, chief of staff and political director at The New England Joint Board of Unite Here, the union that represents food service workers hired by a third-party contractor at Hampshire College. “Obviously we’re glad to know ahead of time that something will happen, even if we don’t know exactly what it is.”
A large number of Hampshire College students and faculty members have recently signed a petition calling for greater democracy in decision making about a merger, and expressing worry about potential layoffs.
“It is essential that any new strategy for the future of the College includes and prioritizes the retention of current faculty, staff, and students, including our financial and professional protection going forward,” the petition reads. “We have been told that care for the interests of students, faculty, and staff is a guiding principle informing recent decisions, but these interests are not reflected in the processes and practices we have seen.”
Another example that Doherty, of AICUM, mentioned as a success was the merger of Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory in 2016. In that case, the Conservatory kept its name, simply adding “at Berklee” to the end.
It is unclear, however, what Hampshire will be able to retain in a potential merger.
With so many small private colleges facing similar situations, some are calling on the state to step in to protect families from the potentially negative effects they could face from a sudden closure or merger.
“We really do need the state Board of Higher Education to have a clear process and set of regulations around a making sure we know what schools might be at risk of closure and merger, and then making sure there is a clear process to make sure families are not blindsided and hurt by it,” said Zac Bears, the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts, or PHENOM.
Though Bears’ organization focuses on public, and not private, institutions, he said the public system is affected by private school closures. For example, Mount Ida students were given automatic admission to UMass Dartmouth after their school closed.
Indeed, the state appears to be preparing to adopt a financial stress test for private nonprofit colleges in order to be able to determine if they are at risk of sudden closure. That’s according to WGBH News, which recently obtained a leaked draft report from a working group under the state’s higher education board.
In an email, Colleen Quinn, a spokesperson for the Board of Higher Education, would not confirm whether a “stress test” was being considered. The board is, however, expected to hear recommendations from that working group on Jan. 22.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.