By Michael Bielawski
After more than 80 years of educating Vermonters and those from elsewhere, Goddard College will finally close its doors due largely to declining enrollment.
The following announcement came via their school webpage on Tuesday.
“Today, Goddard College’s Board of Trustees announced that despite decades of dedicated efforts to sustain the institution, they have ultimately arrived at the heart-wrenching decision to close the College’s doors. Facing financial insolvency, the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to close at the end of the current semester, citing a significant and persistent decline in enrollment since the 1970s as the determining factor that made the decision unavoidable.”
The school has been in financial trouble for years. InsideHigherEd.com detailed some of the history in a report on Wednesday.
“The college has struggled to generate revenue in recent years, according to public financial documents, which show it lost money in seven of the last 10 available fiscal years,” they wrote.
The school was in debt and selling its assets off may have been a last resort to fix the situation.
The report continues, “In 2016, it borrowed $2.1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture—a loan that has not been paid off, Lisa Larivee, executive assistant to the president, told Inside Higher Ed by email. However, Larivee noted the board of trustees plans to sell the campus and settle all debts.”
The news has garnered national attention. Forbes reported on the closure, including what bewildered students can expect to be offered in compensation.
“Goddard has formed a partnership with Prescott College, a private nonprofit school in Arizona, that will allow current Goddard students to transfer there at the same tuition rate. A Goddard College Scholarship Fund also will be established to help students transition to Prescott College and potentially other partner institutions that will be announced in the coming months,” their report states.
The announcement from Goddard suggests that its failure is part of a larger national trend.
“The closure of Goddard College mirrors a trend seen in numerous higher education institutions across Vermont and the nation, all grappling with similar challenges. Goddard College is currently serving only 220 students, down from over 1,900 in the early 1970s,” it states.
A far-left activist college?
Goddard College wasn’t shy about its activist-leaning curricula. In a description of its Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability, it notes that “climate justice” is part of its goals.
“As students learn about the diverse, changing needs of their communities, urban and rural, they specialize in a variety of focused areas from climate justice to food sovereignty to local currencies to permaculture and more in ways that are innovative, mindful and lasting,” it states.
In a post about its “Reimagining Safety” panel, it states it was about “reimagining community safety and justice without police and prisons.”
In another post titled “Keynote Speaker Dharna Noor Addresses Climate Change” activist and writer Dharna Noor chose to blame capitalism for our climate troubles.
She wrote, “At the root of the climate crisis, Noor argued, are global capitalism and corporations that prioritize profits over people and planet. Fossil fuel companies exert enormous influence over policymaking, blocking meaningful climate action and perpetuating our reliance on dirty energy,” she writes.
Colleges pushing away conservatives?
According to Newsweek, colleges across the U.S. are actively discouraging or pushing away the enrollment of conservatives.
They reported, “Using eight surveys of academic and graduate student opinion, we examined the willingness of faculty to cancel controversial academics and to discriminate against political minorities. We also looked at the level of fear among dissenting scholars. And what we found was worrying.”
The report continues that the impacts of these university policies are spilling over into the rest of society.
It states, “While it’s normal for those holding minority views to feel a bit uncomfortable, my study found that younger scholars are far more likely to support an intolerant ‘cancel culture’ that is driving self-censorship and limiting viewpoint diversity in universities. And increasingly, this ethos is moving off campus into other professional organizations such as tech firms and newsrooms.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle. In 2016 his radio show “The Mike B Report” was canceled by Goddard College for his questioning of global warming rhetoric/scientific claims.