Dive Brief:
- Amid choppy headwinds for the sector, Hampshire College has reduced some employee benefits, including suspending retirement contributions for employees for fiscal 2025, a spokesperson said in an email.
- Senior leadership at the school will also take cuts to their compensation. At the same time, the Massachusetts-based private college is giving raises to all employees who make $100,000 a year or under and giving all employees five extra paid days off.
- The college’s enrollment is stable but headwinds including delays in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid prompted it to reassess its revenue and expense model, the spokesperson said.
Dive Insight:
Some five years ago, Hampshire flirted with closure. It went so far as to only admit a partial class of students in 2019, and it was actively looking for a merger partner to help sustain it.
Since those financially distressed days, the college has launched a major fundraising drive that raised more than $43 million to date, the spokesperson noted. It has also revamped its curriculum to replace majors and departments with classes focused on addressing pressing global issues.
Hampshire's enrollment has recovered “significantly” over that time, the spokesperson said. The college projects steady enrollment of 1,000 students by the 2026-27 academic year, and it expects 900 full-time enrolled students for the fall — up from under 500 last year.
Even with those developments, the college ran a total operating deficit of $3.4 million in fiscal 2023, a more than tenfold increase from the prior year, according to its latest financial report. The difference is due to a decrease of nearly $3.7 million in federal COVID-19-related funds that reduced Hampshire’s income in 2023 by that amount, the spokesperson noted.
“Hampshire College remains on a strong path back to financial sustainability,” President Ed Wingenbach said in an emailed statement this week. “Over the last five years, we've been part of an extraordinary comeback and I'm confident the talented team here can support this extraordinary work, while creating a sustainable operating model where expenses and revenues match.”
The benefits changes are relatively modest compared to other institutions that are making cuts — some of them quite large — to programs, faculty and staff this year.
Columbia College Chicago, for instance, recently announced cuts to 70 positions on campus, a 5% reduction in faculty and staff. And University of Lynchburg, in Virginia, said it would nix 40 staff roles in the short term and eliminate 40 faculty positions in the coming years as it cuts programs and tries to balance its budget.
