As Green Mountain College readied to close its doors after 185 years, students enjoyed one of their final spring days on the pastoral campus, with some carrying kale and cabbage from the school’s organic farm and others preparing for a class camping trip.
The school, along with two other small colleges in Vermont, will hold its final commencement this weekend. Green Mountain President Bob Allen mourned his college’s demise as well as its impact on an aging state that is struggling to hold on to young people.
“A lot of these students will probably never come back to Vermont,” Mr. Allen said about Green Mountain’s students, noting that more than 80% of them are from out of state. “They want to stay, they work very hard to find jobs in the state.”
Small private colleges are struggling across the country. Moody’s Investors Service projected last July that the typically slow closure rate for nonprofit, private colleges—about five a year between 2004 and 2014—would triple in the next few years. More schools will likely merge with other institutions, Moody’s said.