Unprecedented crisis grips US colleges, squeezed by soaring costs and Trump

On the morning of April 14, Jina Fast, a philosophy professor at Hampshire College, in Massachusetts, received a message that felt like a bombshell: "The Board of Trustees voted to permanently close Hampshire College following the Fall 2026 semester." The decision was justified by significant debt and declining student enrollment. "We knew it was possible, but we thought we'd have at least 18 months to prepare ourselves. It was really hard," she said. In academia, where teacher recruitment is organized more than a year in advance, professors had only a few weeks to find another job, and all without an unemployment insurance system. Fast had been teaching at Hampshire College for three years, while some of her colleagues had been there for three decades. "Students were given options to transfer to other colleges, even though nothing was guaranteed. Everyone was in shock. This campus was like a family," the philosophy professor added. Founded in 1965, Hampshire College embodied a certain ideal: that of the Liberal Arts College in New England, a distinctly American model of four-year higher education that valued critical thinking, project-based learning, cross-disciplinary research and small-group work. The decline in enrollment proved fatal for the institution, which received almost all of its funding from families. Annual tuition was nearly $70,000 (about €60,000), though few students paid the full amount thanks to scholarships and discounts. You have 82.96% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.