What makes hampshire college unique

Often faculty members would find themselves writing pages upon pages of course evaluations, concentration evaluations and senior capstone evaluations -- sometimes in excess of to pages each year. This work did not account for the enormous time devoted to faculty-governance commitments or the various extracurricular programming that faculty members would engage in: bringing speakers to campus, raising money for those speakers and taking students on topic-related trips -- whether to The Hague to witness the tribunal for a war criminal; to Cuba to learn about arts, culture and politics; or to the U.

All of those activities -- intensive interactions between and among faculty members and students, narrative evaluations, fascinating extracurricular programming, vigorous faculty governance -- are crucial to the exciting intellectual, cultural and political environment that gives Hampshire its spirit. But all of this commitment is difficult to sustain on a shoestring budget. Inefficiency -- not cost-effectiveness, in the form of careful attention, reflectiveness and conversations unhampered by time restrictions -- leads to some of the best education in the country.

Inefficiency requires more money, not less, but for good cause: nurturing young minds and sustaining the education of worldly and thoughtful citizens, which requires the nurturing of faculty minds and lives, as well. That latter model measures its economic sustainability through metrics that are designed to assess the pedagogy or curriculum but tell us little about whether students have evaluated their positions critically or understand the world differently.

The other four colleges in the consortium should understand their obligation to uphold Hampshire as a vital intellectual partner, where their own students take classes and flourish. If it does, then Hampshire will be forced to forfeit its singular gifts and place in the academy, and the world will be much poorer for it.

I fervently hope that Hampshire can continue to exist in its distinct way and thrive among sympathetic partners. Falguni A. This year, she is a senior fellow at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Expand comments Hide comments. View the discussion thread.

We have retired comments and introduced Letters to the Editor. Share your thoughts ». About Contact Subscribe. By Falguni A. February 19, Hampshire College.

Interdisciplinary work was encouraged; the college did not have departments organized by traditional academic disciplines such as biology, English, political science, or art. Instead, it established schools of natural science, social science, language and communication, and humanities and arts, to which faculty were assigned by expertise and interest.

The cost savings in salaries of such a system are obvious enough, though the college promised competitive pay and benefits comparable to elite, private liberal-arts institutions. That pledge gave way in time as financial challenges mounted. All faculty would serve under a contract system with review before renewal; no tenure would exist at Hampshire College. Amazingly, the appeal of the college was such that it attracted at its start outstanding professors from first-rank institutions who gave up tenure to teach at Hampshire.

Salary compression in the academic job market has allowed the college to continue to recruit, hire, and retain talented faculty, even without the promise of tenure. However, the faculty turnover that college administrators expected did not pan out; Hampshire professors tended to stay at the institution.

Although the contract system remained in place, it gave way to reappointments of longer duration such that year contracts in time provided some semblance of the stability conferred by tenure. Shared governance in nearly every aspect of college life became the norm, and a tradition of participatory democracy was thereby established, however imperfectly executed at times. This history provides an important backdrop to the announcements earlier this year by the president and board of trustees that Hampshire is pursuing a yet-to-be-defined strategic partnership—presumably with a larger university that could help stabilize the college financially—and will not be admitting a full class of new students in the fall.

The news came as a shock to most of the current faculty, staff, and students, as well as to alumni and friends of the college. A storm of protest has followed, with student sit-ins of administrative offices, including that of the Hampshire president. Today it is a large body of 29 members, the majority of whom are alumni of the college.

Economies of scale were to be achieved at the new college in several ways. Financial aid would be limited to a modest number of mostly full scholarships based entirely on need. Student self-direction would, in theory, free up professorial time and allow for a smaller faculty.

In fact, students demanded and received a great deal of individual attention from a very hardworking and dedicated faculty. Cost savings would ideally be achieved by having a relatively high student-to-faculty ratio of roughly 20 to 1. Five College cooperation would allow students from all five institutions in the valley to take courses at neighboring campuses.

Hampshire would be especially advantaged by this opportunity, permitting the new school to escape the need of duplicating everything from obscure fields of study to library resources available elsewhere. There would be no formally organized, and expensive, system of intercollegiate athletics. It allowed for the acquisition of a site for the school and, along with additional public and private funds, construction of the campus. The money raised at that time was not set aside as an endowment, given the need for capital expenditures for buildings and operating funds with which to get the school running.

The latter would eventually be paid by the tuition garnered from a carefully selected and mostly full-paying student body, as well as by grants and gifts. Those assumptions were borne of a growth era, when brisk demand and expanding federal funds made higher education more affordable for college-bound students and their families.

Impressive success in raising private funds strengthened the college, as did steady applications from eager and talented college-bound students.

Yet the scheme would soon run up against constraints resulting from less congenial historical eras. On campus, the to-1 student-faculty ratio proved unrealistic, given the individualized nature of academic instruction at the college. A visit to Hampshire is the single most important way to get to know what the College has to offer.

Learn what it's really like to live, work, and study at one of America's most innovative colleges. To Know is Not Enough. Why Hampshire? Outcomes Hampshire's interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to education produces remarkable results.

View Outcomes. Hampshire Changemakers The world looks to Hampshire graduates for leadership in hundreds of fields. View a Sampling of Notable Alumni. Visit Hampshire A visit to Hampshire is the single most important way to get to know what the College has to offer.

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