“The New College Plan.” The treatise outlined a need for new, leaner institutions that would grant students independence in designing their own education. It didn’t see professors as shaping students so much as it saw students shaping themselves. “The most important contribution a college can make to its students is to develop in them a capacity to continue their education throughout their lives,” its authors wrote.
From the jump, Hampshire branded itself as an “independent, experimenting” institution, and its rigorous academic program was not for the faint of heart. An early catalog dedicated over a dozen pages to the school’s philosophy of serving as “a laboratory for experimenting with ways the private liberal arts college can be a more effective intellectual and moral force in a changing culture,” in addition to two dozen pages on the structure of its academic program. Students’ studies were divided into three separate “divisions” instead of the traditional four-year framework.
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