Coming from an alternative education background, I'm saddened to hear that Hampshire College is closing. I looked at attending Hampshire, and the friend of mine who I heard the news from went to the same orientation as I did and wound up going.
I didn't end up going there but always felt an affinity for the place. I believed in the model and in the need for small, funky schools, offering more self-directed education than traditional schools, for students like myself who didn't thrive in more conventional educational settings. (AKA "underachievers". I believe I'm the only person I know with a C average in high school, a teenage arrest on my record, and a degree in physics. Cowabunga, man.)
Obviously this is the result of bigger economic and societal currents that I have no wish to comment on. But it's a loss.
