A steady drip of crises in Massachusetts and across New England may just signal its arrival.
FOR ALMOST SEVEN YEARS, officials in Massachusetts – the higher education mecca of the world – cautiously monitored and prepared for the potentially devastating impact that the inevitable drop in college and university enrollment would unleash.
“We’ve been doing it relatively quietly,” Carlos Santiago, the commissioner of higher education in the Bay State, says about efforts to deflect the slow-moving storm that’s now engulfed more than a dozen colleges and universities, pushing them to merge, consolidate or reinvent themselves in other ways to survive.
Then something unexpected happened last spring that changed everything: On a Friday afternoon in April, the 119-year-old Mount Ida College in Newton abruptly announced it was broke and planned to shutter its doors after commencement the following month, leaving nearly a thousand students scrambling to figure out their future.