Critics of Marlboro College’s decision to close the campus and send its endowment, students, and faculty to Emerson College are demanding the school release the financial documents it considered before deciding to merge with the Boston college.
But while Marlboro trustees have publicly responded by compiling five years of tax returns and financial statements and releasing an as-yet private letter from its accreditors, those critics say they’re still not satisfied.
Will Wootton, a retired, long-time Marlboro administrator and former president of Sterling College in Craftsbury, challenged trustees in mid-December to give him full access to the college’s financials. Within seven days, he said at the time, he would either deliver to the trustees a report about how to keep the school viable in Vermont — or acknowledge the inevitability of the school’s closure.
Wootton said in an interview this week he hadn’t yet looked at what Marlboro has released. But he said the information posted by the school didn’t include the sort of information about the school’s current operations that he needed.
“It’s good stuff, it’s fine. But you don’t build plans for the future out of it. Because you don’t have the details,” he said.
He also acknowledged he had not actually reached out to the school’s leaders to tell them their disclosures weren’t satisfactory.
“Lots of people are, you know. So no, I have not gotten specific on that one. Because lots of people are, and it’s evident on its face in some ways,” he said.
Others have indeed. In an op-ed published in the Bennington Banner Friday, another former Marlboro professor, Adrian Segar, blasted college leaders for their “totally inadequate” response to Wootton.
In an email, Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley noted the school was far from the only one to have suffered Marlboro’s fate in recent years. And he called the information it had provided “unprecedented.”
“In comparison to the nearly 300 schools that have closed or merged in the last three years, Marlboro College is providing access to unprecedented amounts of information about its consideration of different options, accreditation status, and the decision why the alliance with Emerson is by far the best choice,” he wrote.
While critics continue to rally in an effort to save the school, the college is continuing the process of preparing for the merger. Last week, officials announced agreements that will allow students who don’t continue their studies with Emerson to transfer to College of the Atlantic in Maine, Bennington College and Castleton University.
Nearly all the documents released by the school – including its tax returns – were technically already public, except a letter dated Dec. 19 written by Marlboro’s accreditors. In it, New England Commission of Higher Education officials told the school they agreed a merger was “the only way” to tackle the school’s financial and enrollment woes.
Marlboro, the letter notes, has been cannibalizing its endowment in order to stay afloat at a rapid rate, and is on pace to draw down over 18% this fiscal year. The school’s net tuition revenues fell from $3.6 million in 2017 to $1.7 million this year — despite discounting tuition at a rate of 67%.
In an interview, Marlboro trustee chair Richard Saudek said he understood why alumni and community members would search for alternatives. But he also said Wootton had plenty of information upon which to reach his own conclusions.
“There’s no mystery to this. We have been (getting) about $5 million less in tuition than we were about six or seven years ago,” he said. “People try to complicate these things. But it’s really quite straightforward.”
The effort at Marlboro is not the first case of a community group trying to rally together in order to save a Vermont college. When Green Mountain College announced nearly a year ago that it would close, a group of alumni created a website and launched a pledge drive attempting to keep the college from shuttering.
But the group has not been active online since this summer and, reached by phone this week, Maggie Ganguly, the group’s treasurer, said the effort was “paused” for now. She also noted there were other efforts in Poultney afoot trying to carry forward the school’s legacy in other ways. Green Mountain College’s campus is currently on the market.
“We are figuring out next steps,” she said.
Some Hail Marys have worked. The best known case is of Sweet Briar College in Virginia, where alumnae raised millions to save the rural women’s college after its leadership announced in 2015 that the school would close. Alumnae eventually raised $44 million and installed new leadership, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. But while the college remains open to this day, it is also operating almost entirely on donations, and has struggled to recruit enough students.
Ed. Note — An earlier version incorrectly identified Will Wootten’s position at Marlboro College.
