Something of an update to my last post on the slow-motion tsunami in U.S. higher education: Green Mountain College and Oregon College of Art and Craft will close at the end of this semester. Essentially the same fate will befall Hampshire College, because its board of trustees has limited the Fall 2019 incoming class to only about seventy deferred and early decision admits. Few of them will enroll and current students will transfer out, hastening Hampshire College’s impending insolvency.
Applying my measurement of change in annual total expenses per FTE undergraduate from fiscal years 2011 to 2016 to these schools, I get the following percentages:
- 27: Green Mountain College
- 24: Oregon College of Art and Craft
- 25: Hampshire College
Note that these figures are far lower than those for several of the colleges and universities listed in my last post. Does an increase of 25 percent or more over a six-year period in the average cost per full-time undergraduate indicate that a private, tuition-dependent, small-enrollment institution is at high risk of closure? I’ll say, “Yes.”
What’s the figure for the college or university at which you work?