On Hampshire College Closing: "The Referendum" by Mindy Rose

It’s not just fewer eighteen-year-olds. It’s a culture that has slowly, decisively decided that education is a product with a return, not a process with a becoming. It’s a generation of parents who have been taught — by rankings, by social media, by the sheer economic terror of the middle class — that the only safe education is the legible one. The one with a major, a GPA, a clear line from enrollment to employment.

It seems that the news about Hampshire College, a relatively young, somewhat experimental college embedded into the Western Massachusetts 5-College Consortium, spread quickly.

Many of my clients asked about what happened and how we can predict future closures.

That's a whole other topic that I'll attempt to tackle in a future post.

Like the cultures at Sterling, Marlboro, Green Mountain, and other small colleges that have closed in recent memory-- and Antioch in Ohio, which, like Hampshire, was slated to close and revived by alumni, and still holding on-- Hampshire's 1960's ethos and unconventional model feel sadly out of date today.

The college-admission white-noise machine is louder than ever, and the increasingly nationalized, brand-aware searches in average American households are influenced by a cultural emphasis on conventional definitions of "ROI" and "practicality." Again, topic for a whole other post... but as more cultural influencers and AI experts are beginning to acknowledge, desired workplace skills in 2030 will likely have more to do with humanities and social sciences than a traditional pre-professional education.

Hampshire offered none of that. What it offered instead was a chance to become someone you didn’t predict. And that, it turns out, is not what we’re buying.

The loss of Hampshire was not totally unexpected, if it came earlier than predicted. It hit particularly hard in our home; our niece had just paid her deposit at Hampshire to enroll as a transfer student this fall.

The two college counselors in our house talked through this choice with the student in question-- we told her that this is a college that might go away eventually, but the fit and generous affordability offered (ephemeral, sadly) were enough for this young person to take the risk for the sake of her experience over the next 3 years.

My amazing partner, Mindy Rose, was inspired and took to the keyboard to express her many emotions. Read more of her thoughtful reflection-- and follow her Substack for more thoughts on college decision-making and parenting up to and through that stage of development.

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