The college will end all residential graduate programs and certain online degrees at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) by June 2027. In a community-wide email and video announcement, college President Ian Baucom said that the Board of Trustees decided on Wednesday, August 27 to approve his recommendation that Middlebury phase its Monterey-based programs out within the next two years, citing severe under enrollment and financial deficits.
This decision follows the college’s announcement of its $14.1 million dollar deficit in April, $8.7 million of which is accounted for by the struggling Institute. The series of cost-saving measures listed in that budget update, which included reductions to the retirement benefits of faculty and staff and increases in enrollment, sparked several forms of protest and calls to dissolve MIIS from Vermont faculty, staff and students. In May, faculty voted in overwhelming favor of a motion demanding the closure of MIIS within three years.
Baucom’s email shared that all currently enrolled students will be able to complete their degrees with full access to campus resources. Faculty and staff at MIIS will also be supported through a phased transition process, with staff receiving at least four months notice before their positions are eliminated.
“To be clear, this was a financial decision and not a reflection on the quality of our programs or our outstanding Monterey colleagues, whose work is far reaching and significant,” Baucom wrote in the email.
The phase-out will close all onsite graduate degree programs in Monterey, as well as two online degree programs: International Education Management and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Its other online programs — Cybersecurity, Localization Project Management, and MPA in Sustainability, and Organizational Leadership — will remain in place.
Middlebury’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) will continue operations under the Middlebury umbrella in Monterey and in its locations worldwide.
The college decided to merge with the Institute under the Ron Liebowitz administration in 2005. Founded in 1955 as a graduate school focused on foreign languages, international policy, translation studies and terrorism studies, it was placed on probation in 2003 for a pattern of operating deficits by its accrediting institution, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), and sought acquisition by a stronger institution to improve the quality of its programs. An 80% majority of voting faculty passed a sense of the motion opposing the acquisition in 2005, but Liebowitz, who left his presidency in 2015, settled on the purchase regardless. The merge became official in 2010.
Full-time enrollments at the Institute have steadily declined since 2009 and are currently under 440, approximately half of Middlebury’s original target of 850. According to the faculty motion passed in May, “past losses and current deficits combine to more than $25 million per year lost to the College's operating budget.”
Several of the faculty who voted on the motion to close MIIS expressed similar sentiments to voting faculty just over 20 years ago about the Institute’s inconsistencies with Middlebury’s mission as a small liberal arts college.
“With this motion, we can send Ian Baucom a clear message that we expect him to focus on repairing the college's identity and restoring our sense of purpose,” a faculty member said at the meeting in May. “We need to send him the same message that I will share with my friends at Monterey after this vote, that we must stop wasting big amounts of money and time on this attempt to be big, because it is time to start thinking big about being small.”
But in the video message sent with the email announcing the decision to close MIIS, Baucom clarified that Middlebury remains a globally-focused institution.
"[This decision] does not reflect a retreat from our global mission," Baucom said. "Whatever our decision is on MIIS, we must and will continue to be a Middlebury for the world."
Several students, faculty and staff walked out of classes and their jobs, boycotted or temporarily walked out of the Commencement ceremony, and published op-eds in The Campus to exhibit their disapproval of the deficit-induced budget cuts and the financial burden of MIIS in the spring. The budget cuts themselves were not addressed in Thursday's announcement of the Institute's closure.
Baucom in the video expressed his revere for all members of the community at Monterey and his regrets over the difficulty of the choice.
“This was an immensely challenging decision, one I did not recommend lightly, and one the board did not endorse lightly,” Baucom said.
Editor's Note: This article has been updated to better reflect the year the Institute opened, 1955. A previous mistype indicated it opened in 1995.
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