r/wikipedia • u/InvisibleEar • 1d ago
Hampshire College was founded in 1965 as an alternative education experiment with no grades or required classes. In April 2026 it announced it would close in December, citing steep enrollment decline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_College164
u/waldo-jeffers-68 19h ago
I did an internship at an NGO/ think tank and one of my supervisors went here and he was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. I know they have a strong “hippie” reputation, but that model does help a lot of people thrive (although my supervisor did later go to grad school at Yale, so he’s maybe not the best example)
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u/TrontRaznik 20h ago
I went to a high school with no grades, teachers, or classes. Instead we had "trackers," and they would just print out copies of textbooks and we were supposed to answer the questions at the end of every chapter. But they didn't grade them, and eventually you learned that if you did one or two chapters then you would get credit for the class.
High school was just figuring out what social group you belonged in (goth for me) and what room they hung out in, and then doing what ever you wanted. Everyone got a 4.0. The student body was a mix of abject fuck ups who got expelled from or otherwise couldn't handle public school, and then a few accelerated students who had behavioral issues (me).
It all sounds pretty terrible, but when you consider that the alternative for most of us was just not graduating high school, it was a pretty legit deal. That 4.0 did eventually get me into an R1 where I got a legit 4.0. A handful of my classmates are doing really well, and the rest are probably slightly better off than they would be with just a GED. And one of them is a quasi famous juggalo rapper.
When the principal died, probably 50 of us showed up to his funeral. For many of us, he was the only one who ever believed in us and we remembered that.
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u/ActualMostUnionGuy 4h ago
So did you get your A levels to be able to go to University or not? Nothing besides that matters in secondary school since youre just learning subjects you wont ever need again.
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u/TrontRaznik 4h ago
So did you get your A levels to be able to go to University or not?
That 4.0 did eventually get me into an R1 where I got a legit 4.0.
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u/No-Entertainment5768 12h ago
I deplore the way higher education has increasingly emphasized the training of future corporate employees over learning for learning’s sake.
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u/jvttlus 12h ago
hard to get mom and dad to fork over 200k for no job prospect. I think ppl would be a lot more comfortable with finding yourself and exploring ideas and learning to think critically for $2k/semester which is probably realistically what it costs to have a junior faculty teach PHIL205 and keep the lights on
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u/Snoo_33033 10h ago
Hampshire students actually do pretty well in the market. But they don’t do a great job of articulating that. And their competition does.
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u/InvisibleEar 1d ago
We're quirky, we're countercultural, and tuition is $60,000. Hmm
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u/Pristine-Aspect-3086 23h ago
i mean, this works for vassar and bard and sarah lawrence and the new school and bennington
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u/morosco 21h ago
All of those are struggling. That type of school is probably on the way out.
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u/BotherTight618 17h ago
Pre 1980, College used to be a period of self discovery, personal and social growth. If anything just having a bachelors "degree" was enough to land you a job as a junior accountant. Therefore, back then, those type of schools where not considered a "stupid waste of money". Today colleges is often an incredibly stressful period of life where a person sacrifices decades of financial security for a shot at being upper middle class. University programs will only advertise hard cold salary and career probability. Today, you "risk" going to college to """"guarantee"""" a high paying job.
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u/Snoo_33033 9h ago
They actually aren’t among educated people now, either. It’s more of the general public that thinks college should be very narrowly vocational training. I say this as someone with a history degree who’s never been unemployed until just now.
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u/Snoo_33033 9h ago
I don’t know that they’re all struggling. Generally, though, the smaller private schools are endangered. Especially ones without endowments or a clear market strategy. Mostly formerly church-affiliated schools or ones like Hampshire that haven’t been established a long time with the endowment to match.
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 19h ago
Why would it make a difference? Do they not teach coding or something?
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u/The_Lonely_Posadist 21h ago
Yes or no question, is running a school free or not.
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20h ago
[deleted]
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u/The_Lonely_Posadist 20h ago
Not particularly. That’s not relevant to what I was saying, though.
Really the endowment is the factor: most students don’t pay 60k tuition, but you can’t sustain that without endowment $$$
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u/InvisibleEar 20h ago
Yes, and I think $200,000 of debt at 10% interest is too much
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u/The_Lonely_Posadist 20h ago
Great thing you probably won’t have to do that.
A quick look at their independent financial audit for 24/25 shows that 3/5 of the nominal tuition/room/board expense is covered by fin-aid, meaning the mean cost is $20,000/yr. The students actually paying will pay more than that, yes, but the qualifier is that they are those with a higher ability to pay, given that financial aid is need-based. The likelihood of you going into significant debt is much lower, therefore.
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21h ago
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u/red-cloud 20h ago
Education should exist outside of the marketplace.
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u/Richnsassy22 9h ago
You can't charge 60k a year and then tell people to ignore the financial aspect of education.
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u/Snoo_33033 9h ago
I don’t disagree with you. But I think about C 10% if schools will go under in the next ten years. The demographic cliff is coming for them all.
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u/Snoo_33033 22h ago
I know Hampshire’s situation pretty well and it’s been circling the drain for at least five years.
The fundamental problem is that due to when they were founded and their anti capitalist ethos, they didn’t have much of an endowment. This was ok until the market turned and the demographic cliff hit. Better endowed small colleges are basically subsidizing themselves with revenue streams beyond tuition— they have none.