Our story: Why When Colleges Close Matters
We are students from Vermont, brought together by a shared concern for the future of higher education. This project is our senior capstone, an exploration into the profound shifts affecting colleges across the nation and within our own community.
A local lens
When Colleges Close is born from our experiences as Digital Media and Communications students at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. Our state faces unique demographic shifts, a declining birth rate, an aging population, and changes in rural communities, all placing immense pressure on regional colleges. As members of the smallest incoming class in our college’s history, we've witnessed firsthand the discussions and concerns about institutional stability. This project is our way of making sense of these trends and their impact.
Beyond headlines: Our mission
Through this web documentary, we aim to offer a clearer, more contextualized understanding of why colleges are closing. We want to move beyond isolated incidents, highlighting the structural, demographic, and economic forces at play. Our hope is to encourage critical thinking about how data, policy, and public perception intertwine with the human stories of students and communities. Ultimately, When Colleges Close seeks to foster informed discussion and highlight the human impact of systemic change in higher education.
Bridging data and lived experience
While college closures are often reported through statistics and administrative viewpoints, our project brings those numbers to life through the experiences of students, faculty, and staff directly affected by institutional uncertainty. This approach is crucial to us because it bridges the gap between broad trends and real experiences. By placing national and regional data in a specific institutional and geographic context, we highlight how large-scale changes affect local communities, an aspect often overlooked in existing coverage.
Maggie (left) and Cj (right) in Rhossili, Wales.
This project is also shaped by our partnership and friendship. Cj, from California, and Maggie, from Ohio, met at Saint Michael’s College and have worked closely together throughout our time here. In the summer of 2025, we studied abroad in Wales, UK, where we completed projects focused on sustainability and politics, with an emphasis in journalism. That experience strengthened our collaborative approach and reinforced our shared interest in how institutions respond to long-term structural change. The work we did abroad, and the conversations it sparked, directly informed the way we approached When Colleges Close.