Hampshire College ‘hopes to live.’ Can it survive?
AMHERST — Abigail Crocker, a first-year student at Hampshire College, is starting to think about backup plans just in case her school shutters before she graduates.
“I feel very confident that I could transfer, but I really like this school,” Crocker said. “I would be really sad if it didn’t hold out until my senior year.”
With around 750 students, Hampshire missed its enrollment goal by nearly half this fall, enrolling only 168 new students instead of 300. The shortfall compounds serious financial problems for the iconoclastic liberal arts college, which is already facing scrutiny from creditors and remains in danger of losing its accreditation. Meanwhile, Hampshire’s auditor continues to express concern about the school’s ability to survive.
“What’s happening is this dearly beloved institution is sputtering and dying,” said Larry Ladd, a former budget officer at Harvard University, now with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. “It hopes to live, and it may live,” he added, but “I’m prepared to be in mourning.”
On a recent day in January, many students were aware of the existential threat looming over their campus, which the school describes as a cultural village that’s also home to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and the Yiddish Book Center. With approximately 800 acres of rolling farmland — more than one acre per student — it’s prime real estate in the Pioneer Valley.
Students have noticed fewer people on campus and fewer resources, from limited meal options to scarce housekeeping.
“My bathroom doesn’t have any soap in it,” said Charles Barletta, another first-year who was eating lunch on campus with Crocker. She said her curtains had mold when she moved into her dorm.
Sarah Russell, a Hampshire alum and former academic administrator at Duke University, said it would be “deeply unfair” for Hampshire to continue selling itself to prospective students if its financial state is as bleak as it seems.
Buildings need to be repaired, and students are worried, rightly or not, about support for everything from athletics to the film department.
“The joke is like, ‘Maybe Ken Burns will pay for it,’” said Crocker, referring to the famed documentarian who graduated from Hampshire and continues to give it financial support.
It’s no secret that the college’s finances “need to be really carefully attended to,” said the college’s new president, Jennifer Chrisler. But reports of the school’s demise are “greatly exaggerated,” she said, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Hampshire, she noted, is following a financial sustainability plan — originally conceived as a five-year plan in 2019 after it almost closed — to increase enrollment, raise $60 million (it’s raised $55 million to date), and leverage the school’s assets, such as land. The college also redesigned its curriculum to focus on contemporary questions.
“It’s not a sexy plan,” said Jose Fuentes, chair of Hampshire’s board of trustees.
But it is a necessary one to come back into balance, said Chrisler, who officially took the helm at Hampshire in October. Chrisler said it’s important to separate Hampshire’s immediate operational plan from its long-term strategy. She was unequivocal when asked whether Hampshire is considering a merger to keep the school going.
“No,” she said. “That’s an easy one.”
Founded as an “experimenting college” in 1965, Hampshire has always lived with a certain amount of uncertainty due to its small size and limited resources.
In more recent years, its struggle for relevance has been reflected more broadly across the higher education landscape, with declining enrollment nationwide forcing more schools to justify their existence and convince enough families of the value of a college degree.
Since 2015, 32 colleges in New England have closed or merged, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. For tuition-dependent schools lacking large endowments, even modest dips in enrollment can put a serious strain on the budget. Hampshire’s total cost of attendance is about $79,100, though the average student pays much less. The college says 99 percent of students receive financial aid.
Chrisler ticked off stats for student success after Hampshire, including that 65 percent of alumni earn an advanced degree within 10 years of graduation, and one in four graduates will start their own business or nonprofit.
Fuentes, the board chair, is a Guatemalan-born internet entrepreneur who cofounded the language platform Duolingo after graduating from Hampshire. Going to Hampshire may seem like “a bigger risk,” but the market rewards creativity, he said, especially in the age of AI.
Hampshire touts its students as “entrepreneurs” of their own education. Many in the community also point out the safe environment for those who may feel unwelcome in more mainstream spaces, especially amid the Trump administration’s overlapping campaigns to end diversity programs and reshape higher education.
“What’s going on in the outside world makes us all even more supportive of one another and more fiercely committed to keeping Hampshire going,” said Viveca Greene, associate professor of media studies. “We need much more Hampshire in the world.”
Still, some higher education watchers worry that, in 2026, the college does not have a strong enough niche or brand to compete.
“It’s not an Amherst or a Williams,” said Michael Horn, a Harvard lecturer and cofounder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. “It doesn’t have that cachet, waiting lists, or it factor.”
Even amid small liberal arts colleges, Hampshire has always been different. There are no grades or majors. Students design their own curricula, which culminate in independent study projects.
Ash Dunn, 20, was drawn to the school’s legacy of graduating “oddball artist types,” such as electronic music producer Oneohtrix Point Never. Other famous alumni include actress Lupita Nyong’o and author Jon Krakauer.
The idea for Hampshire was seeded in 1958 when leaders of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst colleges, appointed a committee to reexamine a liberal arts education. Since welcoming its first class in 1970, Hampshire has benefitted from being part of the Five College Consortium, which allows students to take classes at member schools.
Unlike the others, it doesn’t have a big endowment — about $24 million, which it leaned on more in the last two years to cover operating expenses. Amherst College, by comparison, has an endowment worth around $3.9 billion.
When Hampshire’s longstanding money and enrollment problems nearly forced it to close in 2019, discussions of a merger with UMass Amherst sent the campus community into an uproar with a student sit-in that lasted 75 days. The president at the time, Miriam “Mim” Nelson, later resigned, as did several trustees, and that fall the college admitted a skeleton class of 13 students.
The next year, the pandemic hit.
In 2023, Hampshire made national headlines when it extended an invitation to students at the New College of Florida after Governor Ron DeSantis launched a conservative takeover of the school.
Hampshire alum Lili Dwight was working in the college’s information technology department when the first “Florida flight” students arrived.
“I started thinking, ‘Maybe this is Hampshire’s niche,’ because so much of the academic world seems to be getting more and more conservative . . . Hampshire could be a refuge,” Dwight said.
Hampshire did grow enrollment from 508 students in fall 2022 to 844 students in 2024, but more staff layoffs hit that year. Dwight was laid off, along with the entire IT department, among others.
While restructuring saved $2.7 million, losing admissions positions contributed to the enrollment decline, Chrisler said.
Meanwhile, Hampshire has a debt of more than $20 million, last year the college’s expenses exceeded revenue by $3.7 million, and problems keep popping up like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.
Its supporters insist the college has a future.
Former president Ed Wingenbach, who is deeply familiar with Hampshire’s financial history, said the most recent operating deficit has “improved dramatically.”
“What Hampshire continues to demonstrate,” said Wingenbach, who’s now president of the American College of Greece, “is an ability to adjust its expenses and its structures to match fluctuating enrollments.”
Even so, once concerns about a college’s financial stability emerge, it’s harder to attract new students, which worsens the financial challenges, said Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College.
“It accumulates,” he said. “Somehow, you need to find a way to stem the tide.”
Chrisler said the college has stabilized admissions staffing and is working to address student complaints about campus dining, housing, and Wi-Fi — “you know, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for college students.”
The school also underscored its strong track record in film, photography, video, and animation, saying that meeting student needs in these areas is “a priority for college leadership.”
Russell stressed the college can’t merely “keep the lights on” — it must also illuminate a way forward. “I would love to see Hampshire become much more assertive in saying, ‘How do we build a preprofessional track?’” she said.
Warren Gorlick, another Hampshire alum who’s a former trustee and served as deputy director in the US Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs, said the college could better promote and facilitate conversations about bequests and major gifts with alumni, the oldest of whom are in their 70s.
“The next 50 years should be better than the last 50 years,” he added.
Students have their own ideas about how to help Hampshire, starting with rehabbing its image and shedding caricatures.
“We are Shaggy because of weed,” said Crocker, alluding to the myth that the characters of “Scooby-Doo” were modeled after Five College archetypes. Then there’s the “Saturday Night Live” skit starring Jimmy Fallon as a hacky-sack-loving stoner at “Hemp-shire.”
While there’s some truth to the parody, she added, in reality Hampshire is “more for the go-getters.”
The “Hampshire experience” is woven into the vibrancy of the Pioneer Valley, where many alumni have chosen to settle, embarking on their next chapters as farmers, teachers, artists, and business owners.
Harrison Blum was recently in a campus café near the Hampshire Early Learning Center, which his two children attend. He is now a hospice chaplain whose work is informed by Buddhism, which he studied at Hampshire before graduating in 2003.
Two decades later, he’s less concerned with how many years Hampshire has left and more concerned with how “we, as a society, can continue to try to do great things that are new and risky and creative,” he said.
Whether or not the institution survives, he added, “Hampshire’s legacy stands.”
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