Laura A. De Veau is assistant professor of the practice in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College.
As colleges reopened across the country this fall, there were hundreds of former students from Anna Maria College and Hampshire College, two schools that recently closed in Massachusetts, still trying to make sense of it all. Some of them landed at another institution; others have yet to figure it out. I think of these students because I know these students — or students who have a lot in common with them. You see, I am an accidental expert on the subject.
When Mount Ida College in Newton closed in May 2018, I was the vice president of student affairs. I had never trained to, or expected to, lead through a closure. But as with other crises I have managed — hurricanes, the death of a student, fires, etc. — you do what makes the most sense and put the well-being of those around you first. My priority was our 1,400-plus students, who faced difficult transitions and the potential loss of academic momentum, community, and confidence in their plans for the future.
Robert E. Johnson, then the chancellor of UMass Dartmouth, came to Mount Ida to meet with student leaders and then with the full student body. Johnson’s message was a balance of pragmatism and caring. He told the students that UMass Dartmouth was both financially stable and a place for them to find new communities and maintain their Mount Ida connections. Hundreds of Mount Ida students enrolled at UMD.
But despite the good intentions, many students struggled to adapt. They felt adrift as they made the transition from Mount Ida’s bucolic 74-acre residential campus with high-touch student academic coaching to the 710-acre Dartmouth campus that features brutalist architecture and a decentralized student advising system.
“When Ida closed, I kept hearing, ‘It’s just a school. You can just go to another one,’” says Mackenzie Bumpus, who was student government president and a junior studying business at the time of the closure. Although she earned her degree at UMD and went on to graduate school at the University of Maine, Mackenzie still wishes the closure of Mount Ida had been planned in a thoughtful way. If it had been, we could have helped her and the other students weigh more options.
Lawmakers, state officials, and accreditors cannot guarantee that every college will remain open. They can, however, ensure that students are protected when one closes by requiring smaller campuses to maintain a comprehensive closure plan and by establishing a central repository for academic records.
Following Mount Ida’s closure, Massachusetts established the Financial Assessment and Risk Monitoring system, known as FARM. It reviews private colleges’ financial condition and can require contingency closure plans, financial assurances, and public notification when a college is at risk of imminent closure. Its limitation: A full closure plan is generally required only after the state sees serious risk.
Anna Maria’s closure illustrates why that timing matters. In June 2025, independent auditors raised red flags, but there was no requirement for a publicly available plan describing how current students would finish their programs if the college closed its doors. On April 23, 2026, three days after celebrating its 80th anniversary, the college announced that it would cease academic operations after the spring semester. Then the students’ scramble for their education, housing, finances, and academic future began.
The state recently announced that it would require colleges to warn that they’re in danger of closing as soon as they appear to be at risk of closing in the next 18 months. But that step isn’t strong enough. Massachusetts should not wait until a college has been labeled financially distressed before asking whether it is prepared to protect students.
The Commonwealth should require every institution with fewer than 4,500 students to submit a confidential closure plan to the state Department of Higher Education. Many campuses of that size are thriving; and this requirement would not be a public signal of failure or an effort to stigmatize small colleges. Rather, it would be responsible stewardship, protecting students if circumstances change and prompting leaders and trustees to think differently about risk and opportunity. Readiness for closure is also strategic planning. It asks not only “How would we protect students if we had to close?” but also “What must we do now to get stronger and remain relevant?”
For instance, the process of creating the closure plan might reveal that an institution has no transfer pathway for a specialized program or that a program depends on enrollment levels that are no longer realistic. Strong leaders could take this as an opportunity to not simply design a “teach out,” in which students would finish the program they’re already in; rather, the process could help an institution identify a partner for a new program that the schools could operate collaboratively.
For students, a closure plan should be a promise that they will not be left to figure it out alone. It should identify multiple destination institutions and transfer pathways for every academic program, as well as the support infrastructure that their students will need on their new campuses. It should also require the closing institution to retain a small team of student-facing administrators for at least a year after closure.
At Mount Ida, we retained such a team. We had not planned for closure, but we knew our students: Many were first-generation college students, students with documented learning disabilities, or students receiving treatment for anxiety. Leaving them at the edge of the pier without a handhold would have been incredibly insensitive. Our approach helped: More than 92 percent of Mount Ida students enrolled elsewhere as transfer students.
The state also needs to ensure that students will always have access to their academic records. Current law requires a closure plan to identify the future custodian of student records once a closure is underway. In practice, that means the former students of a shuttered school must search the Department of Higher Education’s website, find their institution, and contact the listed record holder. The information is inconsistent: Some listings offer a direct transcript-request link; others provide only a general email address or phone number. And it may be merely a matter of time before an institution that has agreed to be the custodian of a closed college’s records also closes.
The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the professional association for campus academic-records experts, recommends that states designate an agency or other approved designee as the repository for academic records from all closed colleges. Massachusetts should follow this recommendation. Such a state-backed repository would provide both consumer protection and consistent service for anyone seeking proof of the education they have earned.
More colleges will close despite their plans to boost enrollment, form partnerships, and trim budgets. The Commonwealth cannot prevent every closure. But college closure plans and state-protected academic records can keep the door to a student’s future open.
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