I teach at one of those small colleges in a small town, and unfortunately a few more are going under each year. For the local communities, it's generally a blow, because they are often large employers. But it's also sad in its own right, to see places that have been around so long, with rich histories and often beautiful facilities, shut their doors. And it's particularly disappointing because the kinds of frustrations that many Americans have with higher education are really far more relevant to elite institutions--incredibly expensive, politically out of step with the mainstream--than to the typical small, private, often religiously affiliated college, which tends to have a small but dedicated faculty working hard to deliver a good education. But of course its the latter type of place that feels the pinch, not the heavily endowed elite schools.
I'm familiar with one successful repurpose. Phillips U was founded around 1910 by the Disciples of Christ. It was primarily a seminary for DofC pastors but also taught a range of regular classes. In the '80s it started to fail for the usual reasons. Enid wasn't a classic college town, and students favored more attractive places. After it closed in 1990, the campus was bought by the state community college system, and it's now a junior college. The seminary itself moved to bigger and more attractive Tulsa, where it remains. The speech and hearing school (where I was trained), was taken over by a nonprofit. It's still running in the same building as the Hedges Center.
Not a college but in the end a similar type of campus is the former Crownsville Hospital Complex just north of Annapolis (the subject of the book "Madness"). The sordid history of the place aside, it has a campus of old buildings that are in disrepair and there is significant environmental mitigation needed to repurpose any of the buildings that are savable (medial waste, asbestos et al) not to mention a waste water treatment facility. The county "acquired" it from the State (well the state really paid the county by giving it to them with some money for mitigation) but even then dealing with the rest of the physical plant, not to mention being very sensitive to the history is quite an undertaking. I can see regardless of the origin of the campus that it's a hard "sell" to repurpose it.
Washington Post just wrote a story a day or two ago about how many of these places are cutting majors if not outright shutting down
I teach at one of those small colleges in a small town, and unfortunately a few more are going under each year. For the local communities, it's generally a blow, because they are often large employers. But it's also sad in its own right, to see places that have been around so long, with rich histories and often beautiful facilities, shut their doors. And it's particularly disappointing because the kinds of frustrations that many Americans have with higher education are really far more relevant to elite institutions--incredibly expensive, politically out of step with the mainstream--than to the typical small, private, often religiously affiliated college, which tends to have a small but dedicated faculty working hard to deliver a good education. But of course its the latter type of place that feels the pinch, not the heavily endowed elite schools.
I'm familiar with one successful repurpose. Phillips U was founded around 1910 by the Disciples of Christ. It was primarily a seminary for DofC pastors but also taught a range of regular classes. In the '80s it started to fail for the usual reasons. Enid wasn't a classic college town, and students favored more attractive places. After it closed in 1990, the campus was bought by the state community college system, and it's now a junior college. The seminary itself moved to bigger and more attractive Tulsa, where it remains. The speech and hearing school (where I was trained), was taken over by a nonprofit. It's still running in the same building as the Hedges Center.
Not a college but in the end a similar type of campus is the former Crownsville Hospital Complex just north of Annapolis (the subject of the book "Madness"). The sordid history of the place aside, it has a campus of old buildings that are in disrepair and there is significant environmental mitigation needed to repurpose any of the buildings that are savable (medial waste, asbestos et al) not to mention a waste water treatment facility. The county "acquired" it from the State (well the state really paid the county by giving it to them with some money for mitigation) but even then dealing with the rest of the physical plant, not to mention being very sensitive to the history is quite an undertaking. I can see regardless of the origin of the campus that it's a hard "sell" to repurpose it.