Goddard College in Plainfield will eliminate its on-campus residency programs this fall and lay off a dozen members of its staff as it looks for ways to stay afloat amid slumping enrollment and rising costs.

The online-only model is just an experiment, and not necessarily permanent, president Dan Hocoy said when he described the upcoming changes to the college community in a letter on Friday.

"Inflation and increased maintenance costs continue to make it progressively more difficult to maintain a fully operational campus for the fewer and fewer students choosing the in-person residency option," he said.

Goddard's current model combines distance learning with occasional "residencies" in which students live on campus for eight days. Those residencies will not take place at the Plainfield campus starting in the fall.

Despite Hocoy's assurance the change may not be permanent, some students and alumni said they think the residencies, which drew about a dozen students to campus at a time, are gone forever.

“Let’s face it: If they shut this campus down, they’re never going to open it again, and that’s absolutely their plan,” said Dustin Byerly, a 2001 graduate and Montpelier resident who worked in marketing and fundraising for Goddard for several years. He added that he believes the spirit of the experimental school, which has always enabled students to design their course of study, will reemerge in some form. But it probably won’t be on the 117-acre campus, home to architect-designed gardens and a collection of iconic but run-down buildings.

“We’re mourning it, but we’ve been mourning it in slow motion for a lot of years,” said Byerly, whose wife, Erin Bylerly, graduated from Goddard, too. “We’ve been seeing it slowly deteriorate but holding out hope against hope it could pull through.”
Hocoy expects about a dozen people who work on campus to lose their jobs around April 1. Many of them are in the United Auto Workers union and went on strike last year seeking higher pay and working conditions. Union organizer Patrick Burke of Holyoke, Mass., said on Friday that he was still trying to determine exactly how many people at Goddard would lose their jobs April 1.

Goddard has struggled for decades to attract students and make enough money to survive as an experimental college. Its founders set out in 1938 to create a school that was an integral part of the community, where students would be deeply involved with school policy making and maintaining the campus. It drew brilliant teachers and students to tiny Plainfield, including Louise Glück, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, who taught at Goddard in the 1970s. Playwright David Mamet graduated from Goddard in 1969 with a degree in English literature.

But enrollment has been declining since that heyday, and in 2002, Goddard went to its current low-residency model, renting out some of its buildings to bring in revenue. In 2021, there were just 390 students, about half the number of a decade before; last fall, Hocoy said, there were only 250.

In fall 2022, the New England Commission of Higher Education said Goddard's accreditation "may be in jeopardy if current conditions continue or worsen." The commission said then that it planned to evaluate Goddard within two years.
Hocoy denied on Saturday that Goddard’s closure is imminent.

“I don’t think it’s the death knell,” he said. “It’s a change that will help us be sustainable in the long run.” But he also said residencies might end up being hosted at another campus. He also said surveys show that students prefer to study online; about 70 percent of Goddard students — many of them at midlife, with jobs and families — choose that option over traveling to the campus for residencies.

“It takes planes, trains and automobiles and maybe a snowplow to get to Plainfield,” he said.

Eliminating the residencies will free up some of Goddard’s 150 dormitory beds and buildings for other uses. Cabot Creamery already rents dorm rooms for about 30 people who work at its cheese plant, about 15 minutes northeast of campus.

Hocoy said Cabot is interested in using more of the rooms. In the past year, he’s rented space to local businesses and nonprofits, too.
But the latest decision could also deter some students who do not want an online-only education. “I’m looking at transfer options now,” said David Harewood, who is pursuing a master of fine arts degree in interdisciplinary arts. Harewood, who lives in Ohio, doesn’t want to continue studying at Goddard if he can’t meet with fellow students and professors in person.

“As a theater person, I need to be in the room physically with these crazy but brilliant minds that the school tends to attract,” he said.

Correction, January 21, 2024: David Harewood lives in Ohio. A previous version of this story contained an error.