The Baffler | C Fosch
The fall of Hampshire College
In 1958, presidents from four schools in the Pioneer Valley—Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts Amherst—floated the idea of creating a fifth institution in a document called “The New College Plan.” The treatise outlined a need for new, leaner institutions that would grant students independence in designing their own education. It didn’t see professors as shaping students so much as it saw students shaping themselves. “The most important contribution a college can make to its students is to develop in them a capacity to continue their education throughout their lives,” its authors wrote.