Mills College to stop enrollment this fall
Oakland women’s school ‘financially untenable’
Mills College in Oakland, 169 years old and one of just 34 women’s campuses remaining in the country, will stop enrolling firstyear undergraduates after this fall, the victim of declining enrollment and years of financial troubles.
The private women’s school has taken desperate measures in recent years to fix those problems. It’s reduced tuition and even fired tenured professors. But it hasn’t enrolled men. Mills’ one attempt to do that 30 years ago led to a student revolt and to the departure of its president — and now, decades later, to a decision to close rather than to invite male undergraduates to share the stately campus.
The college announced Wednesday it expects to confer its
final degrees in 2023.
The news shocked and saddened former students who revere the women’s college, which opened in 1852, as one of the last bastions of singlesex higher education and a welcoming place for feminists.
Instead the college said it will become an “institute” but has not yet explained what that will mean.
“The pandemic has just accelerated the challenges that have faced a lot of institutions that are similar to Mills,” said President Elizabeth Hillman. “Mills has become a place where students … found a voice and a place to thrive and excel and we are really proud of that. Yet it’s become financially untenable.
“There is a definite sense of loss and of grief,” she added.
Mills struggled over the past year due to declining enrollment and budget deficits made worse by the pandemic, Hillman said. While its undergraduate program is for women, the college’s graduate program is coed.
The college — with an annual budget of $50 million — faces a $3 million deficit driven mostly by declining enrollment that only worsened during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the college was in talks with other higher education institutions to transform Mills into a shared campus. But those plans ended when the pandemic forced schools to close down.
Enrollment has dropped by about 30% over the past five years, to 900 during the pandemic, Hillman said.
The college’s enrollment problems predate the pandemic and in 2017 Mills entered a partnership with UC Berkeley that brought some Cal students to its campus in East Oakland. The schools began discussing an expansion of the partnership last fall, the Mills’ student newspaper has reported, but Hillman reportedly said any deal would not involve UC Berkeley acquiring the small liberal arts college.
Hillman said she is in talks with other universities, including UC Berkeley, to expand the college’s connection. She said plans for a new Mills institute would be shared over the next few months and would incorporate community input.
In 2014 declining enrollment and deficit spending led Moody’s creditrating service to downgrade Mills to its lowest investmentgrade rating, Baa3, a negative outlook. A year later, Moody’s withdrew its rating of Mills altogether.
The fate of the 135acre campus with 65 buildings is unclear.
“We do anticipate having others take advantage of it and using the campus,” Hillman said. “We don’t know concretely what that will look like yet.”
Mills will likely give out its final degrees in 2023 — depending on additional action by the college’s Board of Trustees.
Mills is one of few women’s colleges in the country that didn’t go under in recent years, even as it dealt with a precarious financial situation. On Tuesday, former students expressed shock and sadness after hearing the news. The college’s notable alumni include city and state officials, including Rep. Barbara Lee (DOakland).
The college made national headlines in 2014 when it became the first singlesex school to explicitly allow applicants to choose a gender — as long as the choice was female. The unanimous decision by the trustees’ enrollment committee came after a more famous women’s school, Smith College in Massachusetts, drew scorn for rejecting a transgender high school student whose federal financial aid papers called her male.
But even the widespread praise Mills earned among feminists could not save the venerable college.
“As a student at Mills, surrounded by women in a classroom, having your voice heard, feeling like you have a presence and that your ideas (and) your thoughts matter is just lifechanging,” said Carla Hansen, Walnut Creek’s deputy city manager, who got her master’s degree in public policy from Mills in 2011.
“Without that experience, without feeling that, I don’t think I would be where I am today,” Hansen said.
Berkeley Councilmember Lori Droste also received her master’s in public policy in 2011 from Mills and taught courses at the school a few years ago. She said she was “heartbroken” by the news.
“They were really committed to a progressive feminist education and what was so wonderful about it — it provided not only a stellar education, but it invited people from throughout the entire Bay Area,” she said. “Our classes were racially and economically diverse and really created a wonderful community. I’m friends with all these people still. It’s just so shocking.”
Sahar Shirazi, a principal at consulting firm Nelson Nygaard and an Oakland planning commissioner, said the female leadership at the school supported her and her classmates. Shirazi also graduated in 2011 with a master’s degree in public policy.
“I never felt like anyone was trying to compete with me,” Shirazi said. “I felt like everyone was constantly there to help challenge each other, but also to help align our abilities and support each other.”
Angel Fabre, a communications major and editorinchief of the student newspaper The Campanil, said Mills was a welcoming tightknit community and helped her grow and overcome some of her fears.
“I really felt that at Mills, my peers, faculty, everyone wants you to succeed and is rooting for you,” Fabre said. “It just really makes me concerned where all these students will go because they came to Mills for a very specific type of care and I don’t think that will exist anymore.”
Over the next few months, the faculty, trustees, staff and others will discuss the future Mills Institute, Hillman said, which will build on the principles of the college — prioritizing racial justice, and the voices of women and people of color.
“I have a sense of some relief because I do think that this is the right step to take for Mills being able to continue to fulfill its mission,” Hillman said.
Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani