Hampshire College (a small private liberal arts institution in Amherst, Massachusetts) has announced it will close at the end of the year after its accrediting agency moved to withdraw accreditation — a consequence of prolonged financial decline and chronically low enrolment, with the school last year attracting roughly half of its 300-student target. The closure is part of a wider pattern: an estimated 450 of the United States' 1,700 private nonprofit four-year colleges are considered at risk of closing or merging within the next decade, driven by falling enrolment, small endowments, and heavy dependence on tuition revenue. The human cost is significant — research suggests that when a college closes, around half of its displaced students never complete a degree elsewhere.