The Unmaking of an IT Department: A Cautionary Tale

Originally published in The Omen Issue 59.6

Last day of Hampshire’s IT Department. 

Pictured above L to R: Gaby Richard-Harrington, Amanda Saklad P18 (parent of student who entered in 2018), Kate MacGregor, Lili Dwight 74F (alum who entered Fall 1974), Jeff Schmittlein, Rae Ann Wentworth-Cadieux, Staci Frieze 79F. 

Picture Credit: Nebraska Chatham (Access Services Associate: Evening Supervisor, Harold Johnson Library, Hampshire College). Also see Thank you from IT which includes other staff members. 

The Unmaking of an IT Department: A Cautionary Tale

Why did Hampshire College, an iconic progressive institution saved from closure in 2019, outsource Information Technology (IT) service to a national for-profit and lay off dedicated employees, some of whom had been there for decades?

Hampshire's president, Ed Wingenbach, says there will be financial savings and improved nimbleness. Many in the community claim benefits will be elusive and the harm to the community all too real. This article goes on a journey deep into outsourcing - because this is not just a one-time issue but a high-stakes example of a story we must learn from - if we want Hampshire to thrive over the long run. 

Hampshire’s Financial Imperative

In a tragically misguided attempt to make acquiring Hampshire easier for another college, the past administration turned away an incoming class in 2019. This blunder greatly exacerbated Hampshire’s financial challenges. To address that, the college made enormous cuts, increased fundraising and enrollment, and remains on a narrow path to financial sustainability. Intelligent financial decisions and vigilance are still necessary to maintain accreditation and prevent it from closing or losing independence.  

Something Had to be Done

Wm. Josiah Erikson 97F, P13, a former Hampshire staff trustee, worked at Hampshire for 22 years and was one of the IT department’s co-leaders. I spoke with him via Zoom: 

“Higher ed has trouble retaining IT in the first place, more so at Hampshire. There were several failed searches for positions in the IT department, including network (two failed searches) and system administrator.” 

I interviewed Jeff Butera via Zoom. He worked for Hampshire IT for 20 years and Ellucian Managed Services (EMS) at another college for two years. Hampshire had 20 full-time equivalent employees in IT in 2018, but it declined to ten by 2023. After the Chief Information Officer (CIO) departed in 2018, that position was left unfilled to save money. After that, co-leaders ran the department, two of whom moved on last year. 

Butera believes the absence of a CIO may have led to pressure from the college’s insurer, who wanted to see a CIO and cybersecurity officer in place. Insurers are increasingly concerned with cybersecurity due in part to increasing ransomware attacks. Hampshire is covered by Captive Insurance Company, which was formed by Hampshire, Amherst, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke. At press time, it was unclear whether this insurance covered cyber attacks. 

The Announcement

On June 6, Wingenbach announced the transition to Ellucian. Two well-attended staff meetings had students, faculty, and alums, who raised many critical questions and strident complaints about the so-called "town hall” process and the decision. 

Twenty-nine faculty members collectively sent a letter to the administration on June 6 and another on Sept. 12 (Omen 59.1 includes both letters). The community registered opposition through a petition that received nearly 1100 signatures. Nevertheless, last summer, the administration struck this deal while students were away, and the replacement of Hampshire’s IT department by EMS began in the fall. 

Most people I spoke with believed that Wingenbach announced the decision over the summer to skirt student opposition. In 2019, a student sit-in helped prevent Hampshire’s leaders from executing plans to have the college acquired. It also helped lead to the resignations of the president and a faction of the board of trustees. A rally opposed the IT department’s replacement, with an estimated 50-75 people in attendance, but it was too late to prevent the contract from being signed.

People felt that the administration’s process violated Hampshire's values by lacking transparency and shared governance, and excluding those it affected. The process contrasted with labor rights and social justice taught by educators at Hampshire.

Student Perspectives

I interviewed Jack Merrill F22 (Hampshire specifies the entry semester before the year for students, after the year for alums) in person. In his on-campus job, he worked closely with IT and is a web developer studying interface design:

“This wasn’t Hampshire-like. It broke community norms and harms part of the community. IT staff had been here so long. I am aggravated that they did that. From initial conversations with interims, they didn’t fit in with Hampshire's mission. They could at Smith or UMass. At Hampshire, they just didn’t fit in with the community. A lot of students are upset. No opinions were sought from students and staff.”

I spoke with Adonis Dickey F23 in person. He hasn’t worked directly with IT, but still found this an important issue:

“I chose Hampshire because of its community v. other colleges. For the college not to include community and oust beloved staff is wrong and not what I expected when I applied. IT is the backbone of the school; website, how to sign-up for classes. With the values of Hampshire College – it should have been a student-involved decision. When people were showing up about how bad a decision it was, people should have stopped then but didn’t. 

I want the administration to hold more to the college's values. Hampshire doesn’t stay that way because of the name but because of the people in the community want it to be what it is. Going forward, it should involve students and the community. There are always things that can change as the world changes, but there are still core values. Hampshire is built around non-traditional. Outsourcing goes against what Hampshire is, a community of people exploring their own thing.”

A letter from Eliot Troop F22, published in Omen 59.3, states in part: 

"One of the main reasons I chose to apply early decision to Hampshire was its seemingly tight knit community and respect for students...This goes against everything I thought Hampshire was." 

What Was Special

Hampshire is intentionally different from other colleges, even those that use narrative evaluations. Hampshire has been a place of innovation, with the first undergraduate program in cognitive science and the first non-human faculty. These “firsts” reflect that Hampshire has the potential for rapid innovation, which may be difficult for a standard Managed Service Provider like Ellucian to support. Jeff Butera believes the change will not work well for Hampshire and will not save money. He wrote to me:

“Ellucian has NO INTENT to learn Hampshire. They want to take the systems that were built to address Hampshire's unique Divisional system and narrative-based class evaluations and throw it all away. They believe they can find off-the-shelf systems to solve these problems. When you have an academic model that's unique, no vendor makes software that fits just right.”   

I interviewed Chris Perry, a professor emeritus of media arts and sciences from Hampshire, via Linkedin:

“In my experience at Hampshire, every time we tried an off-the-shelf software solution we found it wasn't adequate for our needs. No single piece of software was designed to support HC's unique curriculum. Basically, we couldn't outsource our software needs because no one in the marketplace has the same needs (narrative evaluations, no departments, unique academic programs for every student, a constantly changing set of rules for graduation, and so forth). So there was rarely if ever an existing solution that fit. Thus I question the choice of trading internal people with deep knowledge of HC for an outsourced group who will try to solve HC's problems by using, by default, what works for everyone else.” 

Lee Spector, a former Dean of the School of Cognitive Science, is now a Professor of Computer Science at Amherst College. He explained how IT at Hampshire made unique work possible and created a competitive edge. I interviewed him via email:

“A lot of what I was able to do at Hampshire, and that the students with whom I worked were able to do, was enabled by dedicated and creative IT staff who were there at the time. One example was the development and maintenance of a high performance computer cluster that was significantly more capable than anything available at other small liberal arts colleges. This enabled a lot of work in AI (by myself, Jaime Davila, and many students) and also in animation (largely through Chris Perry and his students). There were many other instances in which Hampshire IT went above and beyond what one might normally expect from a small liberal arts college IT department, and I think this was driven by their unusual commitment to students, faculty, and the Hampshire mission.” 

Jutta Sperling, Professor of History at Hampshire, told me that Hampshire IT provided a unique level of service, came up with great solutions to tech challenges, and was skillful in supporting niche software. I interviewed her via Zoom:

“Kate [Macgregor, who until the outsourcing worked in Hampshire’s IT department providing tech support for faculty] has been personally generous with her time, even helping retired folks. She has solved every problem intelligently. Nobody on earth will ever get someone like Kate for what we paid her. It’s a question of value and what she provided. Kate was undervalued and clearly not comparable. Working somewhere else, she would have made multiples of her income at Hampshire. I valued her (as somebody who volunteered to work for Hampshire College for a lower salary to build the institution), as well as personally for her generosity and intelligence.” 

Labor Policy

James Wald, Associate Professor of History, Hampshire College, states, “Hampshire is marketing a Bernie Sanders curriculum based on a Walmart labor policy.” 

The Ellucian deal included no job guarantees for Hampshire’s IT staff. These dedicated employees received a maximum of six weeks’ severance – even for one employee who provided almost four decades of service. For comparison, past president Mim Nelson, whose failed strategic partnership nearly tanked the college, received almost $900,000 in compensation in 2019, according to Hampshire’s IRS 990. Compared to previous years’ compensation for Hampshire’s president, this amounts to a payoff of about half a million dollars.

Washtenaw Community College (WCC) in Michigan also outsourced to Ellucian in 2019. Inside Higher Ed and MLive reported that all staff at WCC would be guaranteed a position at Ellucian. They received 3-12 months’ severance, career counseling, and a 5-year extension of their current benefits.

Why weren’t Hampshire IT workers guaranteed positions at Ellucian? Doing so would have preserved institutional knowledge and avoided the damage to trust and morale from continued layoffs. Even with Hampshire’s financial challenges, it may have been possible to negotiate training for current employees to fit into new positions at Ellucian or a phased handover that would have allowed some staff to finish their careers at Hampshire. 

Another possibility could have started with filling an in-house CIO position. That person would have coordinated the augmentation of Hampshire’s staff through more training (including cyber security certificates), internships, alum fellowships (positions for recent graduates), consulting, occasional use of job search firms, and strong partnerships. For example, according to Jeff Butera, Hampshire looked into a shared 5-college position for cybersecurity back in 2018. You can read his Aug. 1 letter to faculty in the Omen 59.1.  

Culture Fit

A clash of work cultures between a for-profit company and a radical college could make it harder for Ellucian to find and retain staff and for them to become effective. The other problem is how that company could affect Hampshire’s culture. I spoke with Ann Hackler 77F, via Zoom:

“If you put a new clutch in a 50 year old tractor, it’s not going to work right. Hampshire is a boutique, funky place. That’s what we know. That's why we like it. Not having IT in-house changes the culture. Think how important IT is and it having a big impact on the culture. It’s giving up the means of production.”

Erikson thinks Ellucian will implement industry-standard solutions and is unsure how well that will serve Hampshire :

“Biggest worry about Ellucian: staff stability; will it be long enough to learn Hampshire? Some IT jobs have a long ramp-up time. For some positions, it takes six months before people learn the environment and can work independently rather than taking up more of the time of the people they are interviewing than they are saving. Outsourcing IT is bad for anyone in higher education, especially Hampshire because the personal relationships and particulars of each individual situation are so important to being able to provide good customer service. I am doubtful about Ellucian and if the cultures mesh together.”

The Negotiation

Many I spoke with complained that no one beyond senior leadership saw the proposal or the contract, nor were part of the negotiation. I searched LinkedIn and Google for the senior leadership and board chair’s professional backgrounds. They have supervisory or technology experience, but I haven’t found any with a background in higher education IT. None of the college’s top leadership was at Hampshire before 2019, which potentially could limit their knowledge of what has been tried or considered in the past and the intricacies of how students, faculty, and departments interacted with IT. 

In addition to concerns that the president doesn’t involve significant constituencies in critical decisions, the process raises the question of whether there was a knowledge imbalance in the negotiation. One could argue that no one on Hampshire’s decision-making and negotiation side fully understood the workings of Hampshire’s IT department.

In contrast, EMS has honed its slide deck and selling points while dealing with well over 100 colleges. They have learned about typical areas of concern for college leaders, such as providing fixed costs and dashboards that give leaders a sense of control. According to one staff meeting attendee, Ellucian’s actual product is the “feelings of administrators.” 

Oversight and Transparency

Wingenbach didn’t seek public comment before his final decision. In contrast, WCC had a public meeting that lasted for three hours. Their Board of Trustees held this meeting, whereas Hampshire’s board doesn’t hold open meetings. 

The organizational chart shows that, in the former structure, IT reported to the Director of Budgets and Planning, and then the VP of Finance and Administration. The new VP of Finance and Administration, Tana Boone, formerly oversaw a 160-person IT department at Dartmouth. However, that’s not who Ellucian will be reporting to: Hampshire’s Ellucian CIO will report directly to Wingenbach, leaving no one responsible to Hampshire’s mission and experienced with IT in the position of direct oversight. In contrast, Ellucian is accountable to their own business imperatives, or “a fox guarding the hen house,” as mentioned in public comment at Wachusett Community College (WCC). 

With documents obtained through public records law, Wachusett Community College Watch compared WCC’s expenditures before and after outsourcing. They found that the promised savings didn’t materialize – costs increased. Hampshire and Ellucian are not subject to Public Records Act (PRA) requests, including their contract. Note that Wingenbach isn’t claiming that IT costs will go down but will go up less than if Hampshire kept IT in-house.

In 2019, non-disclosure agreements shielded the details of Mim Nelson’s proposed strategic partnership. Through PRA requests, Dusty Christenson at the Daily Hampshire Gazette eventually unearthed internal discussions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, showing that Hampshire would be closed if they acquired it, which was what protestors against this decision had suspected.  

Wingenbach said that the board chair, Jose Fuentes, and one other trustee advised him. Fuentes declined to answer my questions, stating it was a management decision, and suggested I ask Wingenbach. Wingenbach didn’t return my email or voicemail request for an interview. Carl Ries, Vice President for Finance and Administration when Ellucian was chosen, declined to be interviewed. The former IT workers couldn’t speak with me because they had signed non-disclosure agreements with the college. 

Cybersecurity

Jennifer Chrisler, Hampshire’s Chief Advancement Officer, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette, “the IT environment is becoming increasingly complex, with issues such as preserving the security of student data, and Ellucian would provide a level of service the college could not replicate internally.”

I interviewed Craig Moss F78 via Zoom. He served on the Cybersecurity Center of Excellence of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and is the Executive Vice-President of Ethispher. He is also a Director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, a non-profit that provides free training for organizations and has a free Cyber Leader Certification Program. 

Moss says that the core four pillars of cybersecurity are 1) logins: it’s crucial to have a “strong password” policy and a minimum of 15 characters; use of passphrases is preferred. According to Microsoft, 95% of hacking incidents could have been prevented by two-factor authentication. 2) updating software patches diligently, 3) avoiding phishing, 4) proper file storage/sharing (beware thumb drives as they may have malware pre-installed). 

According to Moss, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) like Ellucian may be good at basic IT, like setting up laptops and managing servers but most need to improve at security. On the other hand, Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are usually better at that because it’s their specialty. While Hampshire may have evaluated Ellucian’s security track record, cybersecurity is generally not a solid primary reason for hiring an MSP.

“What often happens is that there then is a huge gap between the perceived responsibility of the MSP and the organization…Good cybersecurity is people, process, and technology. So Hampshire can clearly hire an MSP to do the technology. But they cannot outsource the people and process side...

Hampshire is responsible for setting a policy and then training the people, both the faculty, the administration, but also the students on these policies…if you think about Hampshire needing to build a culture, that's Hampshire's job, not the MSP's job…

At many colleges, presidents don’t:

“have the expertise to be able to ask the CIO the right questions or to establish the right policies…Hampshire should appoint a cyber leader…that's one of the foundational things that we put forth at the Cyber Readiness Institute that's been really successful. So there has to be a person there that is in charge.” 

Hampshire’s relationship to technology is essential for security and from a competitive standpoint. It needs to show that it prepares students for the jobs and society of the future. Jon Reed 86F, is Co-Founder of diginomica and author of books on art, technology, and careers. He states via email:

“Upskilling for cybersecurity was a solvable problem in that context. Unfortunately, they were not given the chance. That now-dismissed IT staff could have been a vital building block in revitalizing Hampshire's approach to cognitive science, AI ethics and algorithmic literacy. Instead this underestimated staff is gone, and Hampshire is even further behind, in an area where it once was a creative, bootstrapping leader. Outsourcing IT is treading water - and the ships of forward-thinking approaches to tech at Hampshire look like they are sailing.”

Ellucian had its own security problems in the past. Ellucian’s many large accounts with student and financial data, and its venture fund owners’ deep pockets may make it an attractive target for hackers. In 2019, The U.S. Department of Education warned that student information was vulnerable at 62 colleges because of a security flaw in Ellucian’s Banner ERP. Michigan’s Muskegon Community College also has managed IT services from Ellucian. A malware attack caused a week-long shut-down of the college’s network in 2018. 

While Hampshire has not disclosed its managed services contract with Ellucian, I obtained Ellucian’s contract with WCC. It doesn’t include additional staff or insurance coverage in case of an attack. There are hourly rates for additional staff deployments. 

Connective Tissue

Wingenbach’s June 6 announcement compared outsourcing IT to another department that was outsourced:

“The model is similar to how Health & Counseling Services operate, with staff employed by UMASS but integrated into Hampshire College, with a Senior Director reporting to the VP for Student Affairs.” 

However, there are differences. Ellucian is a vast, national, for-profit company. IT is woven into the fabric of the rest of the college’s operations; it is integral to how staff, students, and faculty work and how individuals and groups communicate with each other. Health Services is primarily for individuals’ private appointments for physical or mental health.

Outsourcing hasn’t always worked well for Hampshire. In 2013, it outsourced its dining services to Bon Appetit, which guaranteed jobs for Hampshire dining staff at equal or current pay. In contrast, when Hampshire canceled the contract in 2019 to save money, the staff weren’t guaranteed jobs at Hampshire despite being unionized at Bon Appetit (the only union operating on campus).

Social Justice

According to Hampshire’s website, “From its founding, Hampshire College has attracted students who are engaged inside and outside of the classroom with issues of social responsibility, change, and justice.” For Ellucian to support these efforts, they would need to provide the right staff and adapt to Hampshire’s policy, culture, and ongoing efforts to improve justice, equity, and anti-racism.  

One aspect of social justice is respect for gender identity. Discrimination and outdated software have been problems for Ellucian in the past. In 2016, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that Ellucian agreed to pay $140,000 to settle a finding of discrimination against a transgender employee. A contemporary article in Inside Higher Ed, When Data Don't Fit the Box, explains that out-of-date software by Ellucian didn’t “accommodate transgender students by letting them choose preferred names and pronouns” and went on to explain how Jeff Butera was able to create a workaround for the software limitations that utilized information collected by various systems at Hampshire. He told Inside Higher Ed, “We want faculty to be successful addressing students the way they want to be addressed.” 

Values

Recurring concerns surfaced regarding the decision-making process being diametrically opposed to Hampshire’s ethos and values, including transparency, collaboration, and fair treatment. Sara Draper, the Sustainability Manager at Hampshire, wrote on the Save Hampshire College IT petition:

“I am angry and disappointed that this decision was made without the input of the people who do this work on our campus, and the people that will be affected. Let me (again) remind the administration that 'transparency' does not mean issuing a statement after the fact- it means letting the community know that an issue is under consideration, creating genuine opportunities for input and feedback, and involving stakeholders in the final decision.

Our IT staff are kind, responsive, overqualified, underpaid, and committed to Hampshire's mission. Listen to their expertise and respect their experience. I'm so tired of Hampshire decision-makers acting as if Hampshire can ‘transform higher ed’ by using the same broken-system tactics as other schools.”

Wingenbach acknowledged in the June 26 staff meeting that, “This process was not handled as
well as it should have been and that's my fault.” He didn’t specify what he would have done differently. 

Accessibility

Aaron Ferguson was the Director of The Office of Accessibility Resources and Services (OARS) at Hampshire. His comment on the Save Hampshire College IT petition mentions areas that the financial reports may not reveal:

“As a former staff member in accessibility, I worked with so many amazing IT staff that played an essential role in keeping the Hampshire curriculum and programs accessible in a way no off-campus company could with amazing skill and ingenuity. Good luck getting effective real time captioning integrated with your live stream for events like graduation using an outside vendor.” 

Equity Ownership

While Hampshire already uses some Ellucian products, contracting with them to manage the college’s information technology and work on campus is a major deepening of involvement. Should Ellucian have to meet the same standards as the companies Hampshire invests in? Hampshire College’s investment policy “requires the college to favor investments that do right by the environment, employees, and supply chains, and are governed with transparency and fairness, and to disfavor investments that don’t achieve these goals,” including those in the fossil fuel industry. Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners own Ellucian. According to Mother Jones, “The Blackstone Group, the world's largest private equity firm, which manages over $1 trillion, backs 21 energy companies, of which 52 percent are fossil-fuel projects.” 

Michael Eby writes in The Nation that “firms like Blackstone have made investments in real estate, energy, and infrastructure to become the world’s most crooked landlords and bill collectors.” The New York Times pointed out that “the billionaire founder of Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm, paid $139 million to federal authorities to settle one of the biggest tax evasion cases in American history.”

According to Washtenaw Community College Watch: 

“Typically, once a firm falls into VC ownership, it becomes an unwilling participant in a high-stakes game of musical chairs. The goal of the leveraged VC owner is to flip the company for a profit before the bond payments come due. A leveraged VC owner does not want to get stuck refinancing its upside-down bond debt on a company whose market value has tanked.”

Private equity aims to make the company attractive so it can be sold sooner rather than later, emphasizing operational efficiency. Quality may decline, making it unlikely that they will invest in Hampshire beyond the minimum metrics required by the contract.

Cost Savings

If staffing would be at similar levels, as Wingenbach says, how would it save money since Ellucian also has to make a profit? The only way is by having fewer employees on campus, and attempting to fill in the gap with software they use more or less across the board for all their clients instead of Hampshire IT’s custom solutions. Call centers and remote experts will supplement on-campus staff, but colleges nationwide share these resources. I interviewed Neil Stillings, Professor Emeritus, Hampshire College, via email:

“I was a founding faculty member of Hampshire College and served four terms as the Dean of the Cognitive Science Program, which included the computer science faculty, facilities, and curriculum. Over the years our faculty and students worked closely with the college’s information technology staff to develop and maintain our computing resources and to pursue our teaching and research. It is highly unlikely that the kind of collaboration and collegiality we enjoyed could be maintained with an outside IT contractor. The testimonials from across the college to the intimate support people enjoyed from the in-house IT staff suggests that outsourcing IT was a high-risk decision that damaged a culture of commitment and solidarity in favor of savings that may prove elusive.” 

Hampshire is known for teaching critical inquiry and thinking, but the outsourcing decision was made without allowing the community to question the assumptions early on. I interviewed Gabe Pofcher 17F, a Hampshire alum and IT teacher, via Zoom:

“Hampshire’s administration created a problem by seeing IT as solely a cost center and –to be fair– Hampshire didn’t have much money. This was for years on both sides before and after the primary crisis [2019]. IT staff played an important role in students’ lives, especially after that point... The way an outsourced firm is set up makes it harder for them so I think we lose a lot of that with the change. 

I’m frustrated by the decision-making process. What are the hidden costs of a model like this? What is the size of Ellucian’s contract relative to other colleges? What does that mean relative to the quality of service that Hampshire will get and how seriously they will take it?”

Problems Evident

I contacted the three interim Ellucian leaders on Hampshire’s campus in hopes of scheduling an interview to discuss their plans. They didn’t reply except to note that Jim Pulliam, the Interim CIO, was out for 1-2 weeks in mid-October. The auto-reply to my follow-up message revealed that Steve Budovsky, the Interim Technical Services Director, was gone September 1-18. One of the stated reasons for bringing in Ellucian was the nimbleness of bringing in experts for short periods. However the transition occurred at the beginning of the academic year, which seems a questionable time to be away from campus since that is the time to start work that affects the rest of the year. In December, Lorna Hunt replaced Pulliam; her most recent assignment was at Naropa, and now Pulliam is the Interim CIO there. 

One interviewee emailed me after our conversation on November 6 to let me know they received an all-campus email saying that The Hub, where students register for courses, was down (this was the first day of pre-registration for the following semester). I spoke with Margaret Cerullo, Professor of Sociology, Hampshire College, who mentioned an IT problem she was having:

“I had a computer problem. It was a Mac problem. Ellucian rejected my Hampshire login when I tried to contact them; so I phoned. I was put on hold for seven minutes, so I then called the Ellucian emergency line. The person there knew nothing about Macs. I pointed out to him that lots, if not most, people at Hampshire have Macs. He eventually said ‘oh there is a note on that,’ and googled to find an answer to my problem, but the answer he ended up giving didn’t work. He said he would call the hardware department but didn’t know if they are on campus. I contacted Kate Macgregor. She gave a very simple fix. Normally this might entail a $70 battery fix, but that is an expense professors normally aren’t used to paying. I also emailed Moodle and then went to Rae Ann Wentworth-Cadieux who said she is not at the college anymore. The verdict is out. Can they get the memo and pick up the slack or will they continue to be incompetent?”  

Telegraphed Back in 2019

President Wingenbach’s approach to community and making cuts was telegraphed at his first all campus address: 

“I believe that everyone who is here now is fully committed to building an independent Hampshire, which means prioritizing the mission and values that make us distinct over any particular programs, interests, units, or communities. We've decided that that's what we're going to do so we have to prioritize that.”

The reprise of his talk on the college’s website omitted those points. The problem was that he wasn’t considering cutting communities only as a last resort. He believes he has a mandate to cut almost anything to save the college and continues to run the college in crisis mode. As a result, he looks at specific areas as cost centers without adequately consulting constituencies to understand how these work within the college or considering alternatives. Note that alums weren’t allowed to attend this event, which was essentially his inauguration. 

Lessons From The Crisis

One could take two major lessons from Hampshire’s existential crisis of 2019. The first is that the college shouldn’t make decisions like gutting a department or forming major partnerships that alter the college without transparency, shared governance, and buy-in from all major stakeholder groups. The second is that when the stakeholder groups work together, progress happens beyond what the administration could imagine. This model has proven itself repeatedly at Hampshire. 

During the 2019 crisis, stakeholder groups self-organized, stopped the acquisition that would have closed Hampshire, re-envisioned for the future, and began fundraising. This work continued at the start of Wingenbach’s administration, resulting in a new curriculum, increased enrollment, and more donations. Faculty banded together through the American Association of University Professors to find creative ways to drastically reduce the college’s expenditure on faculty while respecting labor rights and social justice.

Hampshire does need to find ways to save money. Part of the original idea for Hampshire, as outlined in The Making of a College, was to show that the cost “of education can be reduced without affecting quality.” Hampshire is not fulfilling its purpose of trying new approaches by outsourcing an essential function to a for-profit company. The article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled The Ever-More-Corporate University: Almost nothing on campus is off limits to private equity lays out the extent to which neoliberalism has proliferated in academia. 

How to Access Collective Genius

The winning combination unlocking radical change is accessing the community’s collective genius while leadership sets the tone regarding timelines and budget targets. Bringing together Hampshire’s community of cognitive science, IT, AI, game design, and animation stakeholders on a shared goal with specific targets, free to bring everything to the table, could foster leads for staff and faculty, donations and ambassadorship, and bold, innovative ideas. Hampshire had the first undergraduate program in cognitive science. Think of all the graduates who have gone into the technology industry year after year, including Gary Marcus 86F, an expert on AI, and a leading voice in the global debate on the ethics of responsible AI. In his TEDx Hampshire College talk, “The Art of Facilitation,” alum Jay Vogt 72F, reminds us that "People support what they help create." 

The Hechinger Report mentions the formation of new colleges even as other colleges closed, including Northeastern University’s Roux Institute, which focuses on technology and garnered $200 million in donations. The areas of technology mentioned above are in Hampshire’s bailiwick and offer opportunities for funding, job opportunities, and growth in student enrollment. There is a vast reservoir of knowledge among current and former students, faculty, staff, and parents. It is hard to imagine Ellucian being able (or willing) to tap into those resources on Hampshire’s behalf. 

Conclusion

Jennifer Chrisler told the Gazette that outsourcing to Ellucian is “a strategic investment.” However, it may cost more over time as license fees increase and the college becomes locked into their service. Hampshire is a small fish in the sea compared to Ellucian’s other customers. 

Hampshire’s employees were the investment that paid off handsomely. They went above and beyond, building up institutional memory of what works at Hampshire. In contrast, Ellucian staff move from campus to campus according to the company's best interests, not the colleges’. 

Part of Hampshire’s mission is to disrupt higher ed. Other local colleges created Hampshire to devise new approaches to challenging problems through experimentation. Outsourcing integral departments is the least innovative thing it could be doing – the other colleges hardly need Hampshire to try that out. Hampshire’s competitive advantage is its mandate to experiment - and the community of people who have come through its doors as employees and students, which it has helped develop over the decades. 

Hampshire’s successful experiments don’t happen because of autocratic decisions made at the top but through empowering grassroots community members. When Hampshire’s community is watered down, it becomes more like other places and loses its advantage. Unfortunately, other decisions are in the works that may do just that - but that’s a story for another time.

Hyperlinks in this article can be found at bit.ly/unmakingit

Jonathon Podolsky 94F is a journalist member of the Education Writers Association and moderator of Local Frogs: Hampshire College Alumni of Western Massachusetts. He can be reached at movies@podolsky.cc

correction: the original article stated that Hampshire College had the first undergraduate program in computer science. This has been corrected to read first undergraduate program in cognitive science. [Computer science was an integral part].