When your college closes
4/23/202626 min
Hampshire College's closure is the latest sign of a death spiral in American higher education.
This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Avishay Artsy, fact checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
The campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. AP Photos/Leah Willingham.
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First 90 secondsSean Rameswaram· Host0:00
Last week, Hampshire College, a private liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts, that I had never previously heard of, announced it was shutting down. And I thought, "Bummer for Hampshire College." But then I read this is much bigger than Hampshire. [upbeat music] The United States currently has 4,000 colleges, and more and more of them are closing every year. In an article at The Atlantic titled "The Looming College Enrollment Death Spiral," the writer Jeffrey Selingo says that your Harvards, and Yales, and Universities of Michigan and Alabama are gonna be just fine, but that smaller regional schools that you maybe haven't heard of won't be. And that means that students who can afford to go to out-of-state schools for their education will continue to do so, but more importantly, those who can't afford it might not go to college at all. We're at risk, Selingo explains, of turning a four-year education back into a luxury good in this country. When your college closes, coming up on Today Explained.
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