Schumacher College to close
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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Last year, Schumacher College – a specialist provider of environmental studies courses supported by the Dartington Hall Trust – won the RSA Bicentenary Medal. The award recognises the unique nature of provision at Schumacher, focused on a need to “find new ways of living that put people and the planet first”, that draws on practices and disciplines from economics to design and crafts.
Though Schumacher offers and will continue to offer a range of short courses, the higher education component of the offer (a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses accredited by the University of Plymouth) was closed to new students last year. The intention was that the college would “teach out” the remaining hundred or so registered students as a part of an orderly exit.
Totnes Today reports that the College Foundation decided, at a board meeting on 27 August to close all provision with immediate effect. The decision affects 46 students (who will be supported to find alternative provision), while 33 staff are facing potential redundancy (having entered a consultation period). The next term for postgraduates was due to start in less than two weeks.
The Office for Students has said it has been in discussions with the leadership of Dartington Hall Trust about the financial position of the college since September 2023, and was informed last week about the decision to withdraw funding and end provision with immediate effect. It also praises the University of Plymouth for supporting students during the period, and notes that the OfS and Plymouth are working together to ensure students find an “acceptable alternative” and are provided with “appropriate compensation”.
The College’s Student Protection Plan, last updated in 2020, suggests that a:
potential for cross-subsidy, coupled with Schumacher College’s high international profile and strong record of student recruitment (now joined by Dartington Arts School) renders the risk of closure to be very low for Dartington Learning
Closures of higher education providers due to financial pressures have been predicted for a long time – Schumacher may have existed outside of the traditional university sector, and was also experiencing wider and more sustained difficulties, but it is unlikely to be the only specialist provider that is struggling to make ends meet as we move towards the 2024-25 academic year.
Providers facing the likelihood of closure should be open with students and staff about this possibility, and should have a student protection plan in place that addresses students needs in the event of sudden closure. The Office for Students should be making sure that this is happening routinely.
Schumacher is attempting to build a financially and ecologically sustainable future for itself outside of the higher education sector, though it reportedly faces mounting costs and problems with recruitment to non-credit bearing short courses. It may not even exist long enough to collect its RCA Bicentennial Medal.
I am deeply saddened to hear of the closure of Schumacher College after thirty years. I was its director from 2008-12. Back then, the Dartington Hall Trust was at best agnostic about whether the college should continue. The Trust’s chief executive, Vaughan Lindsey, was chiefly concerned with the financial bottom line of its far too diverse operations from shops, to farming, the arts, research centres and colleges. Indeed at that time the shops were the loss makers, with some of Dartington’s other programmes, including the college, having to subsidise that loss.
Most of my time at Schumacher was taken up with trying to navigate between this obsession with corporate centralisation and short term financial management, and the expansion I was keen to see in the college’s programmes. In four years we doubled the size of the campus, developing new post graduate programmes on green economics, sustainable food production, eco building and rural community development. We also introduced Schumacher’s first on-line open learning courses. And, we secured considerable funding from alumni supporters to refurbish the college buildings.
Readers will recall the loss of the College of Arts in 2009 and the negative impact this had upon the local economy of Totnes and the reputation of Dartington. Following the closure of the College of Arts, the Trust’s chief executive wanted to move Schumacher College to the asbestos ridden arts administration and residential buildings at Higher Close. It took us two years to reverse this misguided decision, and instead remain and expand at the Old Postern campus.
By the time I retired, I had come to the view that while the college owed much to the original vision and investment of the Trust,, the time was right for Schumacher to become independent of Dartington Hall Trust’s control, and simply to rent the campus site. Sadly this direction was not followed.
But the real culprit in this saga has been the successive Conservative governments, who savagely restricted the number of visas for overseas students and thus income for a college that has never received any state funding. It is a tragedy of timing that just as we see a change of government committed to sustainable development education, Schumacher College should close. My hope is that its supporters will organise and not agonise, and take the decision to establish the college as an independent educational charity, either running programmes at Dartington or moving elsewhere, including on-line.