[M]arlboro College, a small liberal arts college in southern Vermont, will merge with the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, the schools jointly announced Thursday.
“To our sorrow, we don’t have enough students. And those that come, we discount their tuition too much, so our financial models – they just aren’t sustainable,” said Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley.
Marlboro, where undergraduate enrollment has dipped below 150 this year, will become the Marlboro College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Bridgeport. The two schools have signed a letter of intent and hope to have a deal finalized by the end of 2019. If all goes according to plan, the merged school would be fully operational July 1, 2020.
Quigley said Marlboro reached out to about 70 schools in search of a partner, talked to about 20, and received four written proposals before settling on Bridgeport.
School officials at both institutions say that Bridgeport has agreed to preserve most of the Vermont campus and honor all of Marlboro’s tenure agreements with faculty. Five members of the Marlboro board of trustees will also come on to Bridgeport’s board.
“That link of people, purpose, and the place. Bridgeport kind of saw that ineluctable connection among those. That was really powerful,” Quigley said.
The tiny southern Vermont school is known for its shared governance model between students, staff, and faculty, where members of the college community gather regularly for New England-style town meetings to vote on school affairs. The private college also allows students to largely design their own course of study. The school was designed to be small, but it is currently enrolling about half as many students as it would like to.
The school has tried several strategies to bolster its enrollment and finances in recent years, including marketing a “Renaissance Scholars” program offering free tuition to one student from each of the 50 states. The move got them some press attention, but officials ultimately discontinued the program. Marlboro also got a cash infusion when it sold property in downtown Brattleboro for $3 million.
Bridgeport, a private school with nearly 5,000 students located on Long Island Sound, is best known for its STEM focus and career-oriented programming. Officials at both colleges tout the merger as a way to save money and boost offerings at both institutions.
“This really enhances our arts and sciences programs. And it will also be very complementary in terms of the work that we’re currently doing with sustainability and environmental studies. And it’s a wonderful location,” said Bridgeport President Laura Trombley.
The announcement comes at a time of rapid change in higher education. Nationwide, but particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, small colleges with meager endowments are struggling to survive, merging or shuttering entirely as they compete for a shrinking pool of applicants.
The crisis has hit Vermont particularly hard. Three schools – Southern Vermont College in Bennington, Green Mountain College in Poultney and the College of St. Joseph in Rutland – have closed this year while a fourth, Goddard College in Plainfield, is on probation with its accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education.
The state’s public colleges are contemplating systemwide reform to confront their demographic challenges.
“What I’m really hoping is that we can create a collaborative model that is replicable for other institutions,” Trombley said. “Because it is absolutely key that we continue to appreciate and support how extraordinary the diversity of our higher education environment is.”
