Hampshire Faces Questions About Its Survival. This Is How It’s Charting a Path Forward.

It’s been a tumultuous four months at Hampshire College (MA).  Amid bleak financial prospects, the small liberal-arts institution in Massachusetts announced this year that it would find a merger partner and accept a much-reduced freshman class. But soon after considerable resistance from faculty, students, and alumni, a wave of top leaders stepped down, including President Miriam E. Nelson along with the chair and vice chair of the board. Now, the college is making an all-hands-on-deck push in an entirely different direction, one that takes a merger off the table, spares expected large-scale faculty layoffs, and aims to chart a new path about what it means to be a liberal-arts college in the 21st century.