Bard College announced this week that Simon’s Rock will be relocated from Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Annandale, New York.
The private college’s Board of Trustees and Board of Overseers says the program where high school students begin college early will move to property adjacent to Bard’s existing New York campus.
Current students will remain in the southern Berkshire County town through Spring 2025. Those opting to continue their studies can do so in the other location next fall. The campus founded in 1966 hosts high school age gifted students.
To learn more about the upcoming move, WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with Simon's Rock Provost Dr. John Weinstein.
Well, I think that we've seen over the past, really as much as two decades, real challenges for very small institutions of higher education. So, if you look 15 years ago, we here in the category of institutions under 500 students would have had some peers. If you were to try to find that peer list now, you'd find almost nobody, because those programs have nearly all closed or merged. That's also happening in the, even in the under 1,000 range or even higher in some cases. It's very challenging to have the economy of scale to offer the full range of academic programs you want to have, as well as all the different kinds of supports you want to give to your students and need to give to your students. And so that's really become challenging. And so, for us, the question was, ‘Could we find a model where that was really going to work?’ And amidst enrollments that declined further after the pandemic, which made us more of a 300-student school than a 400-student school, that became even more difficult. So, you know, we didn't want to wither away. We wanted to be proactive. And if this is something that wasn't going to be viable financially at this scale and size, then relocating to be much closer in proximity to the main Bard College campus – and Bard College has been our entity since 1979 with the original merger of Simon's rock with Bard – it made sense to make that move. It was also very important to the board and to myself that if we were going to do this, we gave as much notice as possible to our students, to our staff and our faculty. So, we did not want to see if we could make it and in May make a decision about the fall. We really wanted to be proactive if there was no real economic reason to believe it was going to be any different in the future.
Now, when you talk about economic challenges, has Simon's Rock had to raise tuition in recent years, maybe since the pandemic, or even looking back a little further than that?
Our tuition increases have generally been pretty steady over the past two decades. Challenges also, understandably, families also have a lot of economic challenges in paying at tuition-driven places, so you also see the increased need to give a lot of scholarships and support. So, your tuition revenue is often not what people think it is overall. Really, the main lever we had to pull was increased philanthropy. Our donor base has been very supportive in the past years. And we, you know, in the pandemic time onward, have raised, with the institution, kind of record levels of annual funding, but it's just not enough to meet the gap. And you also, at a certain point, you only want some fraction of your annual budget to be philanthropic. You need the balance of tuition, other revenue and philanthropy, and for us, the balance was just getting way too far into the philanthropic direction.
So, what can you tell me about the new property in Annandale where Simon’s Rock will be relocating?
So, the new property, which is called the Messina Campus of Bard, it’s in the former Unification Theological Seminary property, it's actually in acreage quite similar to what we have in Great Barrington. Here, I think we are around 294 acres and there it's 260. It does not have the hill that we have here on the hill in Great Barrington, it is very flat property along the edge of the Hudson River. It has three very large buildings, and then a few smaller houses and outbuildings. We'll occupy two of the three buildings. One will be primarily for the Bard Academy, which is our 9th and 10th grade, two years of high school that leads into early college. And then the larger of those buildings will house the Early College residentially, as well as a lot of classroom and office space. We will have some of our own library and lounge space on that campus, and then students will also have the opportunity to use the resources on the main Bard College campus, which will be a four-minute shuttle drive away.
Now, how about staffing? Will employees from the campus in Great Barrington also be offered positions at the new campus in Annandale?
We will have a lower level of staffing need because of the economies of scale and smaller program size. So, whereas we have about 140 full-time or substantial part-time benefits-eligible employees here right now, that equivalent number will be more like 40 in the new location. There may be some other positions available in Bard in other ways. So, it is a substantial difference there, and that is one of the heartbreaking aspects. We've got a great team of people here who work really hard and do great work. We just, we just don't need that scale, and we can't afford that level of scale, either
For any staff that will be relocating, are there any programs in place, or envisioned to be in place to help people with their move?
I mean, in terms, you mean, those who are relocating actually to the new campus?
Yes, will there be any financial support for relocating to New York from Massachusetts?
We're not anticipating that at this time. It's an hour difference, and a lot of certainly a lot of employees who live that distance or more from the Simon’s Rock Campus. So, some people may actually relocate their residents, some people may not,
And what will become of the property in Great Barrington?
It will eventually be sold. I don't have, kind of, any details on that. My area of focus is more on the continuity of the student programs and how to best take care of our employees as we try to find different pathways with them, whether it's with this new program or with other opportunities. So, I don't have a lot on that, but certainly it will eventually not be the property of Bard College anymore.
And just lastly, does Simon's Rock have a message for the local community as it goes through this transition?
Yeah. I mean, we've loved being here. We wish we could stay. It just doesn't work, and we've tried very hard. We've appreciated the support of the community. We know that a lot of community members enjoy this space, you know, and we enjoyed that relationship. We just weren't able to find a way to make it work in the long term. But we certainly weren't aiming to leave the area. It was the situation that we found ourselves in
