Opinion: Some Questions About Hampshire College

I was deeply saddened and perhaps more surprised than many at the announcement of Hampshire College’s imminent closing, and I have a number of real questions that I have not seen addressed and considered, even if they cannot be definitively answered.  Perhaps the fundamental and overarching question is:

Is Hampshire’s institutional failure tied closely to its educational ideas?  I remain convinced that those ideas are exciting, rare, and valid.  I think especially of the centrality of a dialogic relationship between faculty and students, the elimination of grades, the engagement with the outside world as an expectation, and the encouragement of risk taking.

Subsidiary but essential questions include:

Was Hampshire’s financial plan ever realistic?  Eschewing endowment in favor of high fees, foundation support and ongoing gifts from a developing alumni base as well as a possibly fanciful cooperation among Pioneer Valley educational institutions, when was it clear to trustees and administration that that was not working?  What was done to make changes that would preserve the educational vision and put it on a more solid foundation?

What, really, was the relationship between Hampshire and the Five College consortium?  The Consortium was active in Hampshire’s creation.  Words were spoken at the time about the need for an alternative educational setting to serve as laboratory and a model for higher education.  What exactly did Amherst College, UMass, Smith College and Mt. Holyoke College learn from that lab and that model?  Now, I understand, they are all solicitous in providing help to students and faculty left in the lurch, but how did that initial support play out over sixty years?

Words were also spoken at the time that “Hampshire is not for everyone.”  And they were spoken again as recently as last week in the Indy. Why not?I have always believed that Hampshire was based upon a superior model of collegiate education and that it is a serious and rigorous place. It is for everyone who cares about learning, community, and – as the records of so many of its graduates confirm – being successful and creative in the world.

I suppose it is too late to ask what Hampshire College has learned from its sixty year existence.  And these are tough times for higher education all over, encrusted with costly assumptions and attitudes that imperil it just as much as the current administration in Washington.  But asking what the Five Colleges have learned seems reasonable and important.  Asking what financial models are needed in a period of global instability, social antagonisms and vast inequalities seems essential. We need laboratories and models to help us find the right questions to ask so that Hampshire’s closing can itself be a constructive contribution to higher education.

A useful debate has emerged over the past week or so in the Indy.  I hope it continues.  There is still a great deal to learn from, about, and at Hampshire College.

Michael Greenebaum was Principal of Mark’s Meadow School from 1970 to 1991, and from 1974 taught Organization Studies in the Higher Education Center at the UMass School of Education.  He served in Town Meeting from 1992, was on the first Charter Commission in 1993, and served on several town committees, including the Town Commercial Relations Committee and the Long Range Planning Committee.