Transferring up the Road: Adjusting From Hampshire

Last spring, more than 700 students and 60 faculty members had their futures uprooted by an email. On April 14, Hampshire College announced it would close at the end of the calendar year.

“Everyone was crying and freaking out,” said Mia Yamasato-Gragas ’28, a junior at Hampshire at the time. By the time of the announcement, most of the transfer deadlines and faculty job applications had closed. Departments across the other four colleges reached out to faculty, offering open positions and creating new ones. Many schools, like Amherst College, extended their transfer deadline for Hampshire students.

Thirteen students and nine former Hampshire faculty are now enrolled and employed at Amherst. I spoke with three students and two faculty members to investigate how they’re navigating the transition.

Hampshire’s Closure

In 1958, the presidents of Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst formed a committee to reexamine the liberal arts. They devised a new form of education called “The New College Plan” that emphasized close mentorship, supporting students’ curiosity, and multidisciplinary learning. The plan remained unrealized until Harold Johnson, Class of 1918, donated six million dollars to the project — making the founding of Hampshire College possible. 

On April 14, the fate of Hampshire College was sealed overnight. As the school closed and withdrew its accreditation, international students had to transfer immediately or jeopardize their visa status. Only students entering their final year, called Division III students, were allowed to remain on campus this fall — condensing their final two semesters into one.

“It was the suddenness of the announcement that was a shock to a lot of people,” Jonathan Heller ’28 said. 

Faculty members received the news at the same time as students, but it was not as much of a surprise to some of them. In 2019, Hampshire experienced its first threat of closure. But the college found ways to stay open, shrinking its student body and laying off staff. “From 2019 on, many of us understood the college was in a fragile state,” Visiting Professor of American Studies and Education Studies at Amherst Kristen Luschen said. Luschen was a full-time professor at Hampshire until 2019, when she was offered a Five College position at Amherst.

Visiting Professor in Music and Asian Languages and Civilization and former Hampshire professor Junko Oba also noted a generational divide between the faculty who experienced the threat of closure in 2019 and those, often younger professors, who were hired in the past few years. The newer generation of faculty were less aware of the precarity of the college’s finances. “They also had a heavier burden on them,” Oba said. “They have house mortgages, and they have to send their kids to college.” 

Faculty members also had to navigate the emotions of their students and friends. It was “immense anger, mourning, grief, sadness,” Luschen shared. “You’re watching your colleagues struggle with what’s next for them and their families.”

Some former Hampshire faculty were offered permanent or temporary positions at other colleges, but according to Luschen, “there is a huge need [among] staff and faculty who have not found positions.” She is part of a committee raising money through the Help Hampshire Workers fund to support former Hampshire faculty still searching for new positions.

Coming to Amherst

Of the 88 Hampshire students who applied to transfer, 13 are currently enrolled at Amherst. 

“Most of the other Hampshire transfers that I know of actually took a lot of Amherst College courses,” Yamasato-Gragas shared, explaining why so many Hampshire students were motivated to transfer to Amherst.

Many students described difficulties with transferring course credits as most Hampshire courses had no prerequisites and overlap across disciplines. Ana Alves de Abreu ’29, a film and media studies major, has to repeat her sophomore year at Amherst. Amherst also requires a two-year residence at the college — meaning that Heller and Yamasato-Gragas have to repeat their junior year. 

While having to extend their undergraduate experiences, students nonetheless chose Amherst for a variety of reasons: rigor, research opportunities, or even the application itself. “The Amherst questions were very inspiring for me,” Alves de Abreu said. Yamasato-Gragas received more financial aid from Smith College but ended up choosing Amherst, feeling that she had already built connections here as a member of the Amherst College Symphony Orchestra. “I want to graduate with people that I know,” she shared.

The Transition

Despite being ten minutes away from each other, Hampshire and Amherst have distinctly different learning environments. Hampshire emphasizes personalized independent work. There are no majors or departments — students design their own course of study. Instead of grades, students are given narrative feedback from their professors. 

Oba recalled a moment in her classroom at Amherst when a student asked if they were going to be tested on the assigned terms. “I think that phrasing was interesting,” she said. “It’s not even, ‘do we have to memorize them?’ ... [it’s more like,] ‘if I’m not going to test you, you’re not going to study them.’”

Hampshire had a different pedagogical approach to learning — one that often resists the traditional classroom structure. Students at Hampshire “are not expecting to come to class sitting,” Oba shared, citing the different ways students at Hampshire and Amherst engage in class. According to her, Amherst’s classroom set-up inspires “a very different way of being attentive,” she said.

Luschen also noted a difference in how Amherst students approach learning. Hampshire students tend to take an activity and “reframe it and expand it in a couple of different directions … whereas at Amherst, I can lay out a class activity, and students will really dig into that activity, which allows us to have a much deeper discussion,” she shared. 

Teaching at Amherst since 2019, Luschen helps guide former Hampshire professors as they navigate Amherst, particularly regarding administrative differences. For example, faculty at Hampshire were not required to go through the course approval process that is mandatory at Amherst.  

Another big shift for former Hampshire faculty and students is Amherst’s traditional grading system. Alves de Abreu shared that it is difficult to have to think about grades rather than solely focusing on the learning process. “When you think about the results, you end up paralyzed a little bit, and you tend to get anxious,” she said.

Despite the challenges of the transition, both staff and faculty noted they felt welcomed into the Amherst community. “The staff and the deans, they really try to get to know you,” Yamasoto-Gragas shared. 

However, for former Hampshire faculty who were granted one year positions, it’s difficult to integrate into a community that is temporary. “I don’t even know where I will be next year,” Oba said. “So in that kind of situation, it’s very difficult to cultivate a sense of belonging.”

Hampshire’s Legacy 

While Hampshire’s pedagogical approach to liberal arts education was unique, the college is one in a string of nationwide small college closures. It is projected that over a quarter of the still-operating private, nonprofit universities and colleges in America are at risk of having to close or merge in the next decade.

Groups like Hampshire Next, though, are attempting to salvage Hampshire’s legacy by fundraising to buy the 434 acres of land that the college now stands on. “We definitely do not want a data center there,” Oba noted. Supporters hope to reimagine the college or give a portion of the land back to the Indigenous populations. If they don’t raise sufficient funds, the land will be sold to the highest bidder. 

Most of the students I spoke with chose Hampshire for its unconventional approach to education. ‘It's very autonomous, and you can do whatever you feel like. The quality of your education is kind of up to you,” Alves de Abreu said.

Despite Amherst’s differences, students and faculty both expressed a desire to bring community-engaged learning to Amherst. “We are a community,” Luschen said. “Those connections push beyond the confines of the physical space.”

“I would like to believe that our coming to Amherst is going to be something positive,” Luschen shared.