From the Boston Globe: When Gaurav Jashnani was offered a position as an assistant professor at Hampshire College, he saw it as a good move: Even though the iconoclastic liberal arts school doesn’t have a tenure system, the job would put him on a forward-moving track at a forward-looking institution. So in 2024, he relocated his family from Belmont to Northampton, where he became a first-time homeowner. Now, less than a month after Hampshire announced it would close, he’s staring down unemployment. Like most of the school’s roughly 250 employees, he will have no paycheck, no severance, and few job prospects after June, since the hiring cycle for the coming academic year has already closed.
“It’s been kind of a train wreck,” said Jashnani, who teaches psychology, Black studies, and disability studies. For some faculty members, “we just don’t know how we’re going to pay our bills.” Like students, many Hampshire faculty and staff thought the college was on the upswing after nearly closing in 2019. The school, however, was not able to recruit enough students to stabilize its finances, and it failed to secure much-needed debt refinancing and a crucial land sale in recent months. Administrators nevertheless remained optimistic, inviting alumni to brainstorm on Zoom about Hampshire’s “next three to five years” as recently as March 25. Less than three weeks later, on April 14, Hampshire announced it would close.
Now some faculty wonder how Hampshire went from projecting confidence to pulling the plug so quickly — with nothing left to offer its employees...
Full story at http://bostonglobe.com/2026/05/07/metro/hampshire-college-employees-closure/.
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