Last month’s sad announcement that Hampshire College will close its doors this fall was not a shock for many who had been following the college closely in recent years. Its troubles with sustaining enrollment and balancing a budget while delivering a rigorous, vibrant and unique interdisciplinary curriculum were well-known over the past decade. This slow process meant there were opportunities for Hampshire to forge a sustainable partnership with a larger, more stable institution. Unfortunately, the failure of such an arrangement speaks both to the need for more internal institutional flexibility and the unfortunate conformity that has set in across higher education. Its closing is not just painful for those who are a part of the extended Hampshire community; it is something that all of us who support a vibrant higher education system in the United States should mourn.
Hampshire College, founded in 1965, is, in many ways, the best-known member of the third wave of small, progressive, experimental colleges started in the late 1960s and early 1970s including Prescott College (1966); my institution, the Evergreen State College (1971); and the College of the Atlantic (1972). Previous waves in the mid-1800s (when Antioch, 1852, and Berea, 1855, were founded) and the early 1900s (Deep Springs College, 1917; Bennington College, 1932; Black Mountain College, 1933) coincided with periods of rapid political, social and technological change.
