Hampshire College, a small, embattled liberal-arts college in Massachusetts, missed its fall enrollment goal by nearly half — a striking shortfall after seeing years of recovery in its student population and its highest number of applications in over a decade.
The college said it enrolled 168 students, or 56 percent of its 300-student goal. Its total enrollment for the fall stood at 747 students.
The setback, first reported by MassLive last week, ended three years of overall enrollment growth at Hampshire following a near-closure in 2019, when it welcomed just 19 new students to campus, according to Education Department data. It also came in spite of the college receiving the highest number of applications it’d seen in more than 10 years — upward of 2,700 — after rolling out a new direct-admissions process.
