Dive Brief:

• Faced with pending insolvency, Goddard College will close permanently at the end of its current semester, the institution announced Tuesday.
• The college has struck a teach-out agreement with Arizona-based Prescott College so students can finish their degrees and “continue Goddard’s legacy of progressive education and experimental pedagogy,” it said in the announcement. Under the plan, Goddard students will pay the same tuition rates at Prescott.
• Colleges in Vermont, among other states, have been the subject of closure concerns for years. Falling enrollments, inflation and an end to pandemic-era relief are adding pressures to college finances, especially among smaller, private institutions without large endowments. 

Dive Insight:

In announcing Goddard’s closure, officials pointed to wider challenges facing small, private institutions and higher ed broadly. 

“Despite trying many different approaches including partnerships, Goddard College could not beat the trends of inflationary pressures, demographic shifts and changing educational preferences,” the college said. “The closure of Goddard College mirrors a trend seen in numerous higher education institutions across Vermont and the nation, all grappling with similar challenges.”

Officials noted that Goddard enrolls 220 students, just a fraction of the 1,900-plus students it had in the early 1970s. 

Goddard’s trustees voted unanimously to close as the institution faced insolvency. The college’s latest financials show its revenues fell more than half a million dollars short of its $7.5 million in expenses. Revenue between the college’s 2023 and 2022 fiscal years fell by nearly $1.6 million. Goddard also carried just over $1.9 million in long-term debt. 

“If there was a viable alternative, the Board would have taken it,” President Dan Hocoy said in a statement. “But sadly for all of us, there was not.”

Goddard’s administration is working with Prescott’s leadership to place its faculty at the partner institution. It is also working with nearby Cabot Creamery to find jobs for college staff, with Cabot to host a job fair for Goddard employees in the coming months. 

Among its efforts to stay open, Goddard announced plans about three months ago that it would move to an online-only format. At the time, the administration cited enrollment declines on campus and signaled that layoffs would follow the transition. It also said it was exploring other options, including partnerships with other colleges and organizations. 

Originally a seminary, its modern incarnation was founded in 1938 on what had been a sheep farm, Goddard was meant as a democratic educational experiment in “plain living and hard thinking.” In the college’s own telling, its enrollment swelled through the 1960s amid the back-to-the-land movement. 

Today, the college primarily serves adults aged 25 and older and emphasizes student-directed learning. The liberal arts college offers bachelor’s and master’s programs in subjects such as education, health and sustainability. 

Board Chair Mark Jones called the college’s closure “a significant loss for students in search of an alternative, progressive higher education.”

In recent weeks elsewhere, Alabama-based Birmingham-Southern College and Oak Point University in suburban Chicago announced pending closures, while Wisconsin-based Northland College declared financial exigency after flirting with potential closure. Northland is still expected to make the final call on its future in the coming weeks.

Before closing, many colleges draw down their assets to buy as much time as possible for a turnaround — essentially delaying closure for as long as possible — Moody’s analysts said in a report last summer. At the time, they predicted gradually increasing closures.