After nearly two decades of polemics, the Monterey campus is set to close in 2027.
As the books are settled, we must ask ourselves: What will Middlebury do with its new windfall of nearly nine million dollars a year?
I hope to convince you that students, staff, and professors ought not to be placated with vague promises of improvement, but demand specifics: New professorships, increased salaries for staff and professors, and the reimplementation of campus staples (such as the Commons and Midnight Ross). Failing to do so risks losing the money in opaque administrative initiatives that perpetuate themselves rather than re-strengthen our ability to educate.
We must act quickly. Incoming funds must be appropriated or risk being lost in the next fiscal year. As the next budget is drawn, those who scream the loudest and the earliest will have an advantage. It therefore implores us to know what to scream for.
One of the simple requests will be to reverse the decline in professorships and stagnant wages. Compared to other liberal arts colleges, Middlebury offers relatively low salaries (bottom 15th percentile). Lowering professor pay means positions are treated as career stepping stones, rather than a place for professors to set down roots and foster an academic community. Higher wages help retain our professors, underscore our own commitment to educational excellence, and attract new talent. Creating new professorships will also alleviate the stress placed on courses with high enrollment but low staffing – a common problem on campus that belies our 9:1 student-faculty ratio. This will be especially crucial as Middlebury moves to increase student enrollment. Using our funds in this manner will result in more personalized learning, smaller classes taught by better, more motivated professors, and more variety for students – the very core of our liberal arts experience.
An increase in wages for staff will also be vital in Middlebury’s revival. The state of our dining halls, libraries, and dorms is a daily referendum on whether we have sufficient staff. We have found creative workarounds (such as employing more students), but ultimately, these are stopgap measures and not sustainable labor policies. The answer is straightforward: Offer more money. Quality of life on our campus will increase with better-maintained facilities, longer hours of operations for dining halls, sports facilities, and libraries. If you want a campus that runs, pay for the people who run it.
The steps outlined above would already greatly improve Middlebury’s standing. But these funds can also be used to foster something less measurable, but even more important: campus community. Much of Middlebury’s student experience ought to be underscored by a tightly knit community. Instead, we have gradually dismembered the very organizations that helped bind Middlebury together. Programs such as the Commons system were tossed due to their associated costs, and Midnight Ross has become a husk of its former self. Re-establishing these programs will incentivize closer professor-student relationships and help foster a livelier, more curious, more active campus.
While Monterey caused financial strain, scrapping everything is a mistake. Programs associated with Monterey, like the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), provided both valuable learning experiences for undergrads, as well as raising the school’s reputation in fields it would otherwise not contribute to. They are also, crucially, self-sustaining. With a CNS facility in Vermont already approved and slated for an on-campus location, integration becomes crucial. Using some of these funds for the integration of these programs into the broader undergraduate experience will help continue to broaden students’ horizons and maintain Middlebury’s status as an elite institution.
As old programs are shuttered, new ones are bound to appear. I plead not to let “new” become a substitute for “good”. We do not need a larger Proctor (the lines are largely due to understaffing), or more museums, or more art initiatives. These programs, though noble in their intent, require further upkeep — which we already struggle with — and provide more ‘things’ but do not provide substance. Middlebury College lacks the latter, not the former. In short: Invest in people, not in projects.
There will be others who will try and use this money if you don’t. For the last 20 years, the Middlebury administration has expanded as student life and professor opportunities have shrunk. In 2005, the size of the senior leadership team was about five, with a student population of approximately 2,400. Today, the senior leadership team has more than tripled (17 members as of April 2025). In comparison, the student population has grown by about 300 in 20 years (about 8%). One has clearly outpaced the other, even though the former serves the latter. Salaries within the administration outpace those of professors, having almost quadrupled for the president and doubled for upper administrators. Their growing numbers sit oddly out of place in the otherwise austere policies being written from Old Chapel. If the Middlebury community does not speak out quickly and decisively, it will be administrators who will enjoy the lion’s share of future funds.
Unprecedented attacks on the nation’s education system make the shuttering of any place of learning a tragic one. Monterey is a household name in Washington’s policy circles and well respected for its translation programs that prepared diplomats and UN translators alike. I myself passed through the campus, and am better for it. But after 15 years of financial difficulties, something had to give. President Ian Baucom took a sad but necessary step.
How he decides to proceed will frame the legacy he has begun to build. Either closing Monterey was the first move in a slow but gradual decline of Middlebury College’s influence, as financial mismanagement continues to eat away at student life, academics, and the college’s reputation. Or, if these funds are used to bring back the programs and staff that made Middlebury unique, it will place it firmly in the ranks of those institutions that continue to make good on their promise to educate, challenge, and support their students through small classes, great teaching, and the tightly-knit intellectual community that defines a liberal arts education.
