As Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, continues to restructure and raise money, the institution is facing the possible loss of accreditation.
The college has been asked to appear before the New England Commission of Higher Education at a hearing next month. The organization's president, Barbara Brittingham, said they're concerned about the college's leadership turnover and its finances.
Boston Globe higher education reporter Laura Krantz spoke with NEPR about what accreditation loss would mean to Hampshire.
Laura Krantz, Boston Globe: Very technically, it would mean that Hampshire's not eligible for federal funding. That would impact things like students' ability to get a federal student loan to pay for their tuition at Hampshire.
It also just sort of casts doubt over Hampshire. You know, families are looking at it as a place to send their child. They're probably not going to want to send their kid to a school that's unaccredited.
Carrie Healy, NEPR: Typically, getting to a full loss of accreditation for a college or university is a multi-step process. Is that a predictable process? Do all of the steps always get followed?
Yes, it's relatively predictable. And I will say accreditors do give schools every chance to correct the situation, because the last thing they want to do is withdraw a school's accreditation, although they have.
But a school, typically, is first given quite a bit of notice that they may be put on what is called probation, which comes before loss of accreditation, and then they have a chance to meet with the commission and argue why they should not be put on probation.
Then, if they are put on probation, they have two years to correct whatever issues the commission finds. And then, after that period, if they have not, accreditation will be withdrawn.
But I've seen schools who have actually come back from that, they've fixed the problem. Pine Manor Collegeis an example, in Brookline, that addressed the issues, and now is fully accredited once again.
Other schools, when they lose their accreditation — I'm thinking of Burlington College in Vermont, was not able to correct those issues, and ultimately lost accreditation, and closed not too long after.
There are a number of colleges that are going through some turmoil at present. Some of the standards that the New England Commission of Higher Education are looking at are that these colleges have "clearly defined purposes," they've "assembled and organized those resources necessary to achieve [those] purposes," and they have "the ability to continue to achieve [those] purposes." Does Hampshire give pause to any of that when looking at how other colleges have fared during this process?
Yeah, I would say so. A lot of times, what the accreditors these days are looking at is a school's financial resources. And from the very beginning of the sort of recent turmoil at Hampshire, the now-former president let everyone know very clearly that there would be some financial trouble for the school down the road — not right away, but down the road. And things have only gotten more tumultuous since then.
So I think that the commission probably has some concerns. There's a plan right now to to raise a lot of money in a short period of time to keep the school going. So I think that the accreditors are wondering if that's a really feasible plan.
A lot of schools on probation — I've seen a lot of them end up just voluntarily closing at that point, saying, "We don't actually have the resources to correct this, and we're just going to go ahead and shut down in an orderly fashion."
The acting president, Ken Rosenthal, says he's confident that they'll be able to uphold the accreditors' standards. What are the things that he's going to be looking at, other than financial stability?
I think he's going to be trying to make sure that the quality of the programs stay at the level that they have been, or a level that [satisfies] the accreditors, because part of the way that they are going to try to save money is by cutting some of the faculty.
I will say, too, that after Mount Ida College closed last year, the accreditation agency has become more proactive. They're being more aggressive in monitoring, because they don't want a situation like that to happen again, where the school unexpectedly shuts down, and catches everybody off guard.
So it's possible that this is just sort of a preemptive move by accreditors. Hampshire could lay out a plan for fundraising and academic programs that satisfies the accreditors — at least for now — and they could be fine, and move forward as they hope to, as an independent college.
