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Middlebury College announces elimination of graduate programs at its Monterey, California campus

Ian Baucom
Jeneene Chatowsky
/
Middlebury College
Ian Baucom

Vermont’s Middlebury College is ending its residential graduate programs at its Monterey, California, campus.

On Wednesday, the Middlebury College Board of Trustees voted to end in June 2027 residential graduate programs and some online offerings at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, generally referred to as MIIS.

Middlebury College President Ian Baucom delivered the news in person in Monterey Thursday.

“Most simply put the students beginning these programs at MIIS this fall will be the last entering class at Monterey. We will support them fully as they complete their degrees over these coming two years and we will do everything we can to support our MIIS faculty and staff over this wind-down period,” Baucom said in a video message. “This is tough news. MIIS has been part of Middlebury for over twenty years. It has been a leading global center of international studies. This is a sad and tough day.”

Baucom said the decision to end operations in Monterey was a financial one.

“For the past 15 years the institute has experienced a long term decline in enrollment that accelerated during the pandemic and follows a trend among many residential graduate programs across the country. Middlebury has made significant efforts to build new programs and advance marketing at MIIS over the past several years. Even with these measures MIIS’s enrollments have not recovered and continue to decline. This has left us with unsustainable operating deficits at the institute,” Baucom explained. “After careful review of a range of options it became clear to me that ending our existing programs and operations after our current MIIS students complete their degrees was our only viable option.”

Middlebury College signed an affiliation agreement with the institute in 2005, and in 2010 formally merged. Degree programs at the Monterey campus include environmental policy and management, global governance and policy, nonproliferation and terrorism studies, and threat intelligence. The self-sustaining James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies is not affected.

Middlebury's announcement comes as colleges across the country have been limiting or suspending programs in the face of declining enrollments and the Trump administration's cuts or rescission of federal research funds.