Newbury College: Analysis of College Closure and the Impact on Students and Staff

Alia Wong focused on the closure of Newbury College for The Atlantic in an article published June 18, 2019, "The Surreal End of an American College: Small schools across the United States are facing budget shortfalls and low enrollment—leading some to shut down in the middle of students’ higher-education experience."

Newbury College suspended class in December 2018. Wong describes how college personnel communicated the decision and masterfully lays out the emotional impact on staff members and students, many of whom viewed the "...closure as simultaneously shocking and predictable, a dissonance that few had the words to describe."

She concludes that in "...many ways, a college’s closure plays out like a business liquidation—the employees get their severance packages, the property goes on the market, the customers are told to move on. But students and faculty suggested that a college closure cuts even deeper—that the raw pain and the stakes involved in such a shutdown are compounded by the fact that Newbury was also home. And Newbury welcomed many of its students when few other schools would..."