Posted on 07/24/2019 9:26:44 AM PDT by robowombat
It took down the flag after Trump’s election. It opposes ‘intense debate.’ Its freshman class is 15 students. It Could lose its accreditation in November
GREG PIPER - ASSOCIATE EDITOR •JULY 2, 2019
If you need an object lesson in the financial perils of wokeness for colleges, look no further than Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
It got on the national radar after Donald Trump’s election, when the private liberal arts school responded to campus unrest by removing the American flag (among others) from campus. Then-President Jonathan Lash said it was an impediment to “addressing racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors.”
He doubled down when criticized, saying the American flag’s presence interfered with the ability of students to express themselves. Everyone who is not delusional correctly recognizes that the flag symbolizes our constitutional right to express ourselves – even when we burn it. (The flag was flown again after two weeks.)
A year later, Lash’s administration canceled a speech by a gun-rights activist – two hours before its scheduled start – because the sponsor hadn’t disclosed it might provoke “intense debate.”
Lash didn’t last, and Hampshire might not, either.
We told you in February that the unconventional college – which has no grades, no majors and no test scores it will consider in applications – was on the brink of financial collapse and might lose its accreditation. One statistic illustrates just how much trouble it’s in:
Fifteen.
That’s the number of incoming students who have enrolled in the fall term, according to an eye-opening profile in The Boston Globe. Last year’s class was 290 students. Hampshire has lost more than half its usual enrollment for all classes, leaving around 600 students on campus.
MORE: Hampshire is on the brink of collapse
It would be a mistake to blame Hampshire’s problems solely on its performative wokeness, since many of its nearby peers are doing fine and they’re just as woke.
But Hampshire never bothered to cultivate the habits of a successful college, particularly a healthy endowment fed by alumni fundraising.
It has periodically lowered its academic standards to draw a larger enrolling class – with 1,500 students as recently as the early 2010s – but the increased tuition, room and board payments have been offset by extra costs from financially and academically needy students.
As a result, the college has regularly laid off faculty and staff, including earlier this year. It has until Nov. 1 to overhaul its governance and financial resources, under orders from the New England Commission of Higher Education, according to the Globe.
It commissioned mega-alumnus Ken Burns to lead a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign, in the hopes that a quick cash infusion will save this institution that has gambled wrong for nearly 50 years.
But like an addict who can’t leave the table, Hampshire’s new interim president, Ken Rosenthal, is placing an all-or-nothing bet on the college’s turnaround. He announced last month it will enroll a full class for fall 2020, as if this fall’s tiny enrollment was a fluke.
MORE: Hampshire bans American flag to combat ‘hate-based violence’
In reality, those 15 incoming students were the product of decisions that limited enrollment to students “who had applied early decision or taken a gap year,” given the precarious financial situation.
While incoming students can still avail themselves of resources at the other four members of the Five College Consortium – Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and the public UMass-Amherst -it wasn’t worth it for one student for whom Hampshire had been her “dream”:
In February, [Natalie Barry] received a letter detailing what to expect her first semester: limited extracurricular activities and reduced housing, dining hall, and work-study options.
Barry, 18, instantly recognized it was time to move on. Now she’s bound for Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., to pursue a double major in psychology and political science.
Never heard of Juniata? Unfortunately, it sounds a lot like Hampshire, except that students such as Barry won’t feel the worthlessness of their degrees as soon as Hampshire’s students will.
My brother, a recently minted PhD took a job at Sweet Briar College in Virginia which announced it was closing in 2015 for financial reasons.
They were kept open only due to the generosity of many rich and famous alumni but, at some point, that well is likely to run dry.
My brother is moving on to a more stable position at the state university level in Kansas.
In general, university endowments are enormous (but restricted). Even Sweet Briar has an $84 million endowment for a faculty of 110 and a student body under 500 at the time they announced closure. Generous alumni donations plus more serious courses (such as my brother teaches), have put them on a possible but narrow path to survival.
However, were such endowments put into loan funds which schools could be paid back from as graduates moved on to the real world, real jobs and real income, they could operate in perpetuity.
But that would require that they actually teach something which results in real jobs and real income. To achieve that, you would severely need to limit the number of leftwing faculty teaching fluff courses.
TRUMP CURSE!!!!
‘Imagine the dopamine hit these people continually get from realizing just how amazing they are for taking these brave positions!’
my niece went to this place; very pricey...and naturally she ended up marrying a woman...
Juniata College; Jerry Sandusky’s stomping grounds just prior to his reign of error at Penn State being uncovered...
Well, they can sell their school’s excellent faculty-to-student ratio.
North Dakota has a state owned bank which offers students at colleges in the state comparable great rates. The default rate is also near 0% because most of the loan funds are limited to students studying actual skillsets which result in actual jobs and making progress toward graduation. If you want to study one of the few fluff majors offered in North Dakota, the amount you can borrow is severely restricted.
These are just two highly successful models, one private and one public, to make Fedzilla loans non-essential.
A New England campus for Hillsdale would be even better.
Hampshire was a hippy wet dream college for my colleagues graduating in New Joisey in 1971.
“A New England campus for Hillsdale would be even better.”
Strongly agree.
Read about it
It makes Bennington or Reed or Smith look like the Citadel or Harding
A looney bin college
Has one major alum Ken Burns who keeps it alive
Sure does. I’d never heard of it being this bad before, but I knew it was pretty bad.
Mmmmmmm.....reading "The List" seems to be de riguer for the left....must be how the libs get their thrills.
Lash might be having problems getting it up....... reading The List is lefty viagra.
Who knew?
OIC
I hadn’t heard of that. It does sound like another normal situation for a Democrat though.
Thank you.
They should make the place tuition free, like Burlington College.
Why badmouth Juanita. Know someone who attended. It’s in PA. Big on biology and environmental programs. The person i know who went there turned down 8 other schools.
Get woke, go broke..........................
no big loss, it was a fake college anyway: selling “students” the college “expedience” sans actual education ...
Maybe they’ll turn it into a Retirement Home for Illegals
Liberals. Such fools. Such hypocrites.
The prime movers of hate and violence in America today are those who feel exactly the same about the flag, the country, mom and apple pie.
I'm convinced every liberal, democRAT, Liebertarian, and socialist are pathological attention whores, first and foremost. They function without reason or logic. Just following the latest mantra on High Times.
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