MARLBORO, Vt. (AP) — Some former faculty members of Marlboro College are working on a plan to keep the campus open following the school’s announcement last month that it would close and merge with Emerson College in Boston.
Retired faculty members T. Hunter Wilson and Adrian Segar say they are working with dozens of community members, faculty and alumni on an alternative plan.
“Marlboro College is not an institution like some of the others that have closed that were mired in debt,” Wilson told Vermont Public Radio. “Marlboro has a substantial endowment and very little debt.”
The small, private liberal arts college announced early in November that it planned to close its campus after this school year and move its academic programs to Emerson.
The news followed years of declining enrollment. In the fall of 2018, the school had just 142 students.
It joins a number of small New England colleges that have shut down or merged in recent years as the region’s college-age population has declined.
Wilson acknowledged that finding a way to keep the college viable is an uphill battle but said Marlboro has long faced an uncertain future. “We’ve got through 76 years of uncertainty already, so I think we can get through this one,” he said.
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