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Back from the brink, Hampshire College is approaching financial viability
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Just five years ago, Hampshire College seemed destined for a very different fate.
The 54-year-old private liberal arts college in western Massachusetts was on the verge of closing due to financial constraints. It even chose not to admit a full class of students – seemingly doomed to close its doors, as have many other small private nonprofit organizations in recent years.
But since the 2019 financial crisis, the college’s leadership has steered Hampshire on a path toward financial viability. Hampshire has launched a $60 million fundraising campaign, revamped its curriculum and gone all-in on what President Edward Wingenbach has described as one of the “most distinctive and exciting missions” in higher education: to be an experimental college that aims to transform higher educationhe said.
This meant doing away with specializations and departments and instead offering curricula focused on addressing pressing global issues like climate change and racial injustice.
“If we are to succeed as a stand-alone institution and turn around these financial challenges, we will have to fundamentally commit to the mission and reinvigorate Hampshire’s uniqueness,” Wingenbach said.
Hampshire’s trajectory appears to be headed in the right direction, said Michael Horn, a higher education expert, podcast host and author. College enrollment has begun to recover in recent years and is making progress toward closing an annual deficit.
Other private colleges have failed to successfully turn around dire financial situations in recent years. That includes Pine Manor Collegea Massachusetts institution that announced plans to be acquired by neighboring Boston College in 2020, Monte Ida Collegeanother Massachusetts institution that closed suddenly in 2018, and Iowa Wesleyan University, which closed last year.
Today, other university leaders are trying to learn from Hampshire and discussing the possibility of making changes before they hit their own financial crises, said Mary Marcy, a higher education consultant and former president of California Dominican University.
“The fact that places like Hampshire seem to be changing is an encouraging message,” Marcy said.
Changing the curriculum
Hampshire’s success could provide a roadmap for other small colleges facing financial troubles. But its turnaround has not been easy.
The college’s plan centered on an experimental curriculum that focused on solving pressing world problems rather than teaching discrete specializations. To that end, Hampshire eliminated interdisciplinary schools that functioned as departments, Wingenbach said. This meant that faculty members no longer belonged to a single disciplinary area.
As officials carried out their plan, the college was forced to launch a fundraising campaign that Wingenbach likened to a “political campaign” to keep the college’s operations running.
“We told people that what we’re doing is exciting, it’s unique, it’s interesting, it’s engaging and it’s setting an example for higher education and you should support it,” Wingenbach said. That vision helped drive donations and prospective students, he said.
To close the structural gap, the college needed to eliminate efforts that were not “mission-focused,” Wingenbach said.
For example, Hampshire discontinued independent research centers that did not offer classes to undergraduates. Officials also advised its advancement office to focus entirely on raising funds for direct, unrestricted operational support – not planned giving – allowing the college freedom over how it would use the money.
The changes have brought new opportunities for students. Last year, the college created an optional course structure called “Semester without limits”, where students spend an entire period in a single class oriented around a large project. Last fall, students developed a multi-year climate action plan for Hampshire.
Through the program, students have “immense flexibility to travel, to do intensive work, to not be limited by traditional classroom calendar structures,” Wingenbach said.
Individual faculty members previously adopted many of the ideals, practices and expectations that the new curriculum codified, said Omar Dahi, an economics professor at Hampshire and representative of the college’s American Association of University Professors chapter. This includes baking anti-racism instruction or entrepreneurial skills in the educational experience of each student.
Through these changes, Hampshire has sent a message to prospective students: If you care about climate change, if you care about resisting white supremacy, if you want to understand how to “conceptualize truth, in a post-truth era,” you can work at Hampshire College and be part of a community engaged in this kind of work, Wingenbach said.
Getting faculty buy-in
From a faculty perspective, the 2019 crisis was “incredibly disruptive” and “a huge shock” as teachers feared they would soon be out of their jobs, Dahi said.
Many faculty members left the school after the 2019 crisis, including those who wanted to stay, Dahi said. While no faculty members were laid off, they took negotiated leaves of absence and some temporary salary reductions, he said.
Hampshire leaders cut the number of full-time equivalent teachers from 118 during the 2018-19 academic year to just 65 the following year. In the 2022-23 academic year, the total number of teachers will hit rock bottom at 45 — although they will increase slightly to 50 this academic year.
Dahi himself took a two-year unpaid leave of absence to “be part of this effort to save the college” — taking a grant-funded temporary position at the nearby University of Massachusetts Amherst before returning, he said.
Faculty also struggled with the end of the college’s interdisciplinary school structure, including the elimination of the long-established schools of social sciences and natural sciences, Dahi said.
Each school had “its own rules and ways of doing things, and you felt like you had a home there,” he said.
Yet the faculty also felt pride in helping save the college, Dahi said. A sense of goodwill grew between faculty members and Wingenbach, who took over in the summer of 2019 after Miriam Nelson resigned earlier that year.
Mr. Dahi said there had been a greater level of transparency from Hampshire’s administration after the crisis than he had seen from college leaders in the past, when decisions were often made arbitrarily, he added. That helped foster trust, even when decisions were not universally popular, he said.
“People can at least develop confidence that decisions are made based on logical and predictable things,” Dahi said. “That’s a big transformation.”
However, colleges don’t have to be on the brink of closure to get faculty buy-in to make transformative reforms, Marcy said.
What matters is that Hampshire’s review is aligned with its historic mission, Marcy said. They haven’t dropped everything and gone fully online, for example.
How close is Hampshire to financial viability?
Hampshire’s admission rates and finances are moving in the right direction.
Last fall, 724 students enrolled at Hampshire — a 59.5% increase from fall 2021, when just 454 students enrolled, according to data provided by the college. In fall 2018, before the financial crisis, 1,126 students were enrolled.
Meanwhile, the college received 2,411 applications for the 2023-24 academic year, an 82.7% increase from fall 2020. That number is roughly flat from pre-crisis numbers from 2018.
Wingenbach expects about 900 students to attend college next year, and about 1,000 students the year after that.
By 2026, Wingenbach said he believes the college will be able to eliminate its budget deficit. By that point, the college will become fully sustainable based on tuition revenue, a normal annual fund, typical fundraising and regular distribution of gifts, Wingenbach said.
According to the college, this year’s budget deficit — the amount taken from its sustainability fund — is $3 million, far less than the $9 million the college withdrew last academic year.
To cover the budget gap, Hampshire has raised more than $40 million in unrestricted money and pledges since the 2018-19 academic year, supporting the college’s operations as it transitions to a sustainably sized institution, Wingenbach said.
Can other colleges follow the Hampshire model?
Hampshire’s exact playbook is an anomaly, Horn said, and he’s not sure how much room there is in the higher education sector for a dozen schools like it. But the general principles he followed can be applied at any institution — leaning into what sets the school apart, what would attract students and being clear about that, he said.
“This is a manual that anyone can and should follow,” Horn said.
As president of California Dominican University from 2011 to 2021, Marcy supervised similar transformative changes. The university’s plan, which took about five years to implement, simplified the curriculum, made it easier for students to double major or double minor, and ensure that everyone received certain “main experiences,” such as integrative coaching and community engagement, during her time at the institution, she said.
Under his leadership, Dominican University of California saw graduation rates and fundraising increase significantly.
According to Marcy, university leaders should ask themselves: If we were creating this institution today, maintaining the same values and mission, what would it look like?
“And then you have a lot of freedom to reimagine,” Marcy said.
But when investing in such a transformation, they also need to determine what types of resources and time will be needed for it to be successful, she said.
“The fact that places like Hampshire appear to be recovering is an encouraging message.”
Maria Marcy
Higher education consultant
One factor behind Hampshire’s success is that officials have realized they “can’t be all things to all people,” Horn said. “You have to figure out what your strengths are and, frankly, get out of the things that are your weaknesses.”
This can reduce administrative overhead and cut “extravagant” costs that affect financial sustainability, he said. It can also lessen the need to maintain departments that are ancillary to the college’s core mission. And it can provide clarity about who the institution is serving — better serving those students, Horn said.
A few years ago, when typing “Hampshire College” into Google, suggested searches included: “Is Hampshire College still open?” Wingenbach said.
They are now receiving as many applications as before the financial crisis, and the quality of their pool of applications is “as good or better, it is more diverse and comes from a wider range of states or countries,” he said.
“This is due to the enthusiasm around a curricular approach that no one else is doing but that captures why people value a liberal arts education,” he said. “We end up with students who find this approach absolutely compelling.”