8 Colleges Closing In 2026: Here's What To Know About These Closures And Mergers

Anna Maria College's closure announcement last week brought the 2026 U.S. nonprofit college shutdown count to eight. The 80-year-old institution in Paxton, Massachusetts said its Board of Trustees could no longer project the financial resources to sustain academic operations past the spring 2026 semester. This decision came less than two weeks after the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education formally flagged the college as a closure risk.Anna Maria's announcement came the same day workers at Hampshire College (which announced its own permanent closure on April 14) launched a relief fund ahead of June layoffs. Together, the two Massachusetts institutions underscored the accelerating pressure on small, tuition-dependent liberal arts colleges in the Northeast.Since the summer of 2025, a steady cadence of small-college shutdowns and high-profile mergers have reshaped parts of American higher education.A parallel trend has emerged: a growing number of schools are choosing merger or acquisition instead of winding down.