Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons
By Casey Roepke ’21
News Editor
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit colleges across the country hard, with closed campuses, remote learning and financial losses challenging the higher education industry over the past year. Mills College, located in Oakland, California, is the most recent institution to announce its closure.
Mills College was founded in 1865 by Susan Tolman Mills, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College. Originally a female seminary, Mills College has continued its mission of promoting women’s education for a century and a half.
Mills College was the first women’s college to formally admit transgender students, a policy that was soon echoed by Mount Holyoke on the other side of the country.
On March 17, Mills College President Elizabeth Hillman wrote a letter to the community announcing that Mills would not be enrolling a new first-year class after fall 2021.
“Today, because of the economic burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic, structural changes across higher education, and Mills’ declining enrollment and budget deficits, Mills must begin to shift away from being a degree-granting college and toward becoming a Mills Institute that can sustain Mills’ mission,” Hillman wrote. “Mills will most likely confer its final degrees in 2023, pending further consideration and action by the Board of Trustees.”
Students in the class of 2024 and others who may not graduate before 2023 are encouraged to transfer as part of their degree completion plan, which the announcement stated may consist of “a combination of Mills, partner institution and online consortium courses.”
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the decision to stop granting degrees comes as Mills College “faces a $3 million deficit driven mostly by declining enrollment that only worsened during the pandemic.” While other gender-diverse women’s colleges have seen an uptick in applications, Mills College’s enrollment has decreased by 30 percent in the past five years.
The Campanil, Mills College’s student newspaper, reported that after the initial announcement, senior administrators held a virtual town hall meeting for students, staff and faculty. At the town hall, Hillman again cited “the financial challenges that Mills faces” as a barrier “to continue to grant the kind of high quality education that Mills wants to offer to its students,” as reported by the Campanil.
Alumnae of Mills College were especially saddened and outraged by the announcement. Congressional Representative Barbara Lee, a Mills alumna, released a statement asking the board of trustees to reconsider the decision, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
A #SaveMills online group was created hours after the announcement. Mills alumnae are organizing to advocate for a reversal to the decision, but also to learn more about the financial state of Mills College.
“Honestly, I felt like someone that I loved very much is dying,” Priya Kanuga, who graduated from Mills College in 1993, said. Kanuga said she was devastated to hear the announcement because of the formative experiences she had during her college years.
“You really feel like you can do anything and you can change the world and speak up for those who don’t have a voice,” Kanuga said of her time on campus. “I left believing that when I graduated. It’s a place I go back to when I need to make major decisions. It’s just an incredible place.”
Kanuga and other alumnae in the Facebook and Slack #SaveMills organizing groups have struggled with the lack of transparency surrounding Mills College’s decision and finances.
While the #SaveMills group’s main goal is to immediately reverse the board of trustees’ decision, Kanuga also has longer term goals to sustain the mission of the college. She and other alumnae are strategizing for improved fundraising and recruitment in the hopes of establishing a stronger financial base and encouraging enrollment numbers to grow.
“If women’s colleges are experiencing a renaissance, then why not at Mills?” Kanuga asked. “What’s going wrong?”