Mount Ida faculty ‘betrayed’ in debt deal with UMass
Mount Ida College faculty members said they were “shocked” when the administration sent them emails Friday notifying them the school would close at the end of the spring term because it was tens of millions of dollars in debt.
“The faculty had no idea. We should, as a faculty, have been informed of the dire financial situation the college was in,” said a fulltime professor, one of several who spoke on the condition that their names be withheld because they fear losing the three months of severance promised, regardless of tenure.
Under the deal announced Friday, the private liberal arts college’s 74-acre Newton campus will become part of the University of Massachusetts, which in exchange will take on Mount Ida’s estimated $55 million to $70 million debt.
The school’s 1,450 students will automatically be accepted for fall enrollment at UMass Dartmouth — more than 50 miles away — and given a path to finish their degrees there.
But the deal, which needs approval from the state board of higher education, will leave 280 of Mount Ida’s faculty and staff members without jobs as of mid-May.
School spokeswoman Amy Nagy attributed the college’s debt to “substantial” student financial aid, which “represents a significant portion of its operating costs because there’s not a significant endowment.”
“The amount of Mount Ida’s debt is pretty consistent with the debts of its peers,” Nagy said in an email. “It’s reported publicly in its tax and reporting forms as well as its audits.”
But the full-time professor who said faculty had no idea noted that the administration never hinted that the amount was so high in its annual state-of-the-college updates.
“There was clearly knowledge of the financial situation that was not shared with us,” he said. “I think they were scared that if they let us know in the fall, faculty and students would start to leave, and clearly we should have. So there’s a lot of anger, especially when you look at the raises the president and provost were given within the last year. People feel betrayed.”
The school had been in merger talks with Lasell College, Nagy said, but that deal fell through two weeks ago.
Now, Mount Ida’s faculty have missed out on most colleges’ faculty recruitment cycle for the fall, another full-time faculty member said.
“Most positions are closed by the middle to the end of March,” he said. “So full-time work is going to be tough to find for the next year.”
On Saturday, students and parents blasted Mount Ida President Barry Brown and the board of trustees at a closed meeting, shouting “What am I paying for?” and “Where the (expletive) did my money go?”
Attorney General Maura Healey’s office is looking into the school’s closing and has encouraged concerned students to call the AG’s hotline at 888-8306277.