The small private college apocalypse

The dining hall and Mather building at Marlboro College, in Marlboro, Vt. It has closed and is merging with Emerson College, in Boston.

Emily Dickinson Hall, at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass. The nationally known college has been on the endangered list but has been been revisioning and restructuring itself. This building, designed by the architecture firm of former faculty member Norton Juster and named for the famous 19th Century poet who lived in Amherst, houses much of the college’s humanities operations.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Many small private colleges, like much of retail, are now facing apocalyptic challenges with the huge loss of revenue caused by the pandemic. They already faced existential threats, especially the shrinking number of applicants caused by demographic changes. Many, including (especially?) in New England will close permanently in the next year or two; others may become almost entirely online operations. Our region has long been known for its large number of small private colleges, some of them very old and some created to serve the flood of Baby Boomers in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

What will become of closed campuses? I’d guess that retirement/assisted-living communities will be one major replacement. Old people comprise the most rapidly growing part of the population. And some of these colleges have lots of land now devoted to lawns and trees right around buildings and, farther away, playing fields. Some of the latter may be  turned over to solar-energy facilities or even small farms, or big greenhouses. The supply-chain dangers exposed by the pandemic, as well as the desire for fresher food, and for helping local businesses, may lead many more consumers  to patronize local food producers instead of national agribusiness.= 

As for public-sector community colleges, they’ll increasingly be vocational-training institutions, with lots of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) courses.