Bradford College — A 197-Year-Old College Borrowed for Dorms That Never Filled

Summary

Bradford College, in the Bradford section of Haverhill, Massachusetts, traced its origins to 1803 — making it one of the oldest institutions of its kind in New England — and held its final commencement on May 20, 2000, after 197 years. On November 19, 1999, its board of trustees announced that the college would close at the end of that academic year, ending a lineage that began as Bradford Academy, became one of the most respected women's junior colleges in the country, and finished its life as a small, struggling, coeducational four-year liberal-arts college of roughly 500 students. Some thirty-five full-time faculty and more than a hundred staff lost their jobs.

The college's death was a story of arithmetic, not scandal. Bradford had spent the 1990s running annual operating shortfalls of more than a million dollars while discounting its tuition by up to half to fill seats, a combination that bleeds an institution from both ends. To break this cycle the trustees made a bet: in 1997 they took on a roughly $18 million debt, refinancing old obligations and building new dormitories on the theory that better residential facilities would draw the larger student body — a target near 750 — needed to stabilize the finances. The students did not come. In the autumn of 1999 the college fell short of even its modest enrollment goal, and with operating losses on the order of $11 million over two years stacked atop the dormitory debt, the board concluded there was no path forward.

To its credit, Bradford did not vanish overnight in the manner that would later make Mount Ida infamous. Having announced the closure six months out, the college spent its final year managing a genuine teach-out: it kept nearly all of its full-time faculty through the last semester, stood up a Transfer Advising Center, and hosted two college fairs that brought close to ninety institutions to campus to recruit its displaced students. The second-semester attrition was, to the administration's surprise, only slightly above normal. Students who had rallied to save the school — even appearing on national television — ultimately scattered to other colleges with their credits and, in most cases, their graduations intact.

What ended was not a marginal trade school but a place with a real intellectual pedigree. Under principal Dorothy M. Bell, who led it from 1940 to 1967, Bradford Junior College had earned a national reputation as the most intellectual of the "Little Sisters," the elite women's junior colleges that orbited the Seven Sisters. Its alumnae included the novelist Esther Forbes, the missionary Ann Hasseltine Judson, and Portia Washington Pittman, daughter of Booker T. Washington and the institution's first African-American graduate. When the college closed, its remaining $3.6 million endowment was transferred by court order to Hampshire College, a kindred experiment in self-directed, interdisciplinary learning; the 53-acre campus sat derelict for years before a benefactor bought it and gave it to a Bible college.

Timeline

The Most Intellectual of the Little Sisters

Bradford began in 1803 as Bradford Academy, on the south bank of the Merrimack River in what was then the town of Bradford, later annexed to Haverhill. It opened as one of the earliest coeducational academies in New England, then reorganized in 1836 to educate women only, settling into a long and distinguished career as a female seminary and college. The institution's motto, Surgo Ut Prosim — "I rise to serve" — captured a New England Protestant seriousness of purpose that would mark it for most of two centuries. Its alumnae roll became genuinely notable: Ann Hasseltine Judson, the pioneering Baptist missionary, was an early student; the Pulitzer-winning novelist Esther Forbes passed through; and Portia Washington Pittman, the daughter of Booker T. Washington, became the college's first African-American graduate, a fact Bradford carried with quiet pride.

The institution's true golden age came in the middle of the twentieth century, under principal Dorothy M. Bell, who led it from 1940 to 1967. Bell, educated at Oberlin and Smith, presided over Bradford Junior College's rise to national standing within a particular and now-vanished category: the women's junior college. These were the "Little Sisters," two-year finishing-and-foundation colleges that fed and complemented the Seven Sisters, and among them Bradford earned the specific reputation of being the most intellectual — the one that drew the daughters of cultivated families not merely to be polished but to be taught. For a small school in a mill city north of Boston, this was a real and rare distinction, the high-water mark of its prestige and its sense of itself.

That eminence rested, however, on a model with an expiration date. The women's junior college was a creature of a mid-century social order, and as four-year coeducation became the expectation and women's options widened, the entire category began to dissolve beneath institutions like Bradford. In 1971 the college responded the way most "Little Sisters" did that survived at all: it secured the authority to grant bachelor's degrees and readmitted men, becoming, after 135 years as a women's school, a coeducational four-year liberal-arts college once more. It found a respectable identity in the creative arts and social sciences and an interdisciplinary, self-directed ethos. But the reinvention placed a small, lightly endowed college into open competition with far larger and better-resourced regional institutions — and there it began, slowly, to lose.

The Bet That Broke It

By the 1990s Bradford was caught in the vise that crushes small tuition-dependent colleges: too few students, and too little revenue from each one. Enrollment in the four-year era never climbed far, and to fill its classes the college discounted tuition heavily — by as much as half — which meant that even a full residence hall generated less revenue than its sticker price implied. The endowment was too small to make up the difference. The predictable result was a decade of annual operating shortfalls exceeding a million dollars, the slow hemorrhage of an institution selling its product below cost and covering the gap with reserves it did not really have.

The trustees understood that discounting to fill seats was a losing game and tried to change it with a single large wager. In 1997 the college took on roughly $18 million in debt, refinancing older obligations and, crucially, building new dormitories. The theory was straightforward and not unreasonable on its face: nicer residential facilities would make Bradford competitive for the larger student body — something approaching 750 students — that could finally make the budget balance. It was a growth bet financed with borrowed money, and it staked the college's survival on enrollment that had not yet appeared.

The enrollment never appeared. In September 1999 the incoming class fell short of even the modest goal, leaving the new dormitories underfilled and the new debt service due regardless. Layered on top were operating losses of roughly $11 million over the preceding two years. The arithmetic was now beyond rescue: a college that had been losing money to discounting had borrowed heavily to grow, failed to grow, and now owed the debt anyway. On November 19, 1999, the board of trustees voted to close Bradford College at the end of the academic year. The students learned that the institution chartered the year Thomas Jefferson was president would not survive into the next century.

The Five Factors

Aftermath

For Bradford's roughly five hundred students, the closure was disruptive but survivable, which in the annals of college failure is a comparatively merciful outcome. The six-month warning, the retained faculty, the Transfer Advising Center, and the two recruiting fairs that drew nearly ninety colleges to campus meant that most students transferred their credits and completed their degrees elsewhere; spring attrition barely exceeded a normal semester's. The harder landing fell on the staff: thirty-five full-time professors and some 133 employees lost their jobs at once, and faculty in particular faced a tight academic market that, several noted at the time, prized scholarly output that a teaching-intensive college like Bradford had never asked them to produce.

The institution's afterlife split cleanly in two. Its intellectual legacy and its money went to Hampshire College, where the transferred $3.6 million endowment and the named Bradford College Room preserve, in a kindred institution, the memory of Bradford's interdisciplinary and civic ideals. Its physical body — the historic 53-acre campus above the Merrimack — went the longer, sadder way, standing empty and decaying for years before a Hobby Lobby-linked benefactor rescued it and handed it to a Bible college now known as Northpoint. Bradford College's lasting mark is twofold: as one of the more graceful closures of the modern era, a demonstration that an institution can die without abandoning its students, and as a textbook case of the debt-financed growth bet that small colleges keep making and keep losing.

Lessons

References

• Bradford College (United States) Wikipedia
• The last commencement The Boston Globe Magazine
• The Bradford College Room Hampshire College
• Perfect new fit for old campus The Haverhill Gazette
• Bradford College: Requiem for a College New Directions for Higher Education (ERIC)