Small colleges must change or perish. Jewell, Avila set a new course | Opinion | Opinion

This month’s closure of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, isn’t an isolated failure — it’s a warning. Small liberal arts colleges in Kansas City and across the country are under real threat. Enrollment is down and costs are up. While large universities turn students away, many smaller institutions are still struggling to fill seats. That disconnect should concern anyone who believes in the value of higher education as not just job training, but as preparation for life.

This is what liberal arts colleges do best. They teach students how to think, not just what to think. They build social maturity, accountability and the ability to navigate ambiguity. Those are not just soft skills. They are survival skills in today’s world. I am a direct product of that system. It was a professor at William Jewell College who invested in me personally — challenging how I thought and pushing me beyond what I believed I was capable of — that set me on a path to proudly serve my country at the CIA.

That kind of investment doesn’t come from checking academic boxes. It comes from environments built to develop people into better versions of themselves and is why liberal arts education is a national treasure. At a time when some dismiss higher education as just another box to check, we’re missing the bigger point: Liberal arts graduates become innovators and leaders who drive the kind of societal change we badly need.

Can you see that this need is only growing? As artificial intelligence reshapes the workforce, the jobs that survive won’t be built on repetition. They’ll be built on judgment, creativity and the ability to think across disciplines. Those are exactly the capabilities liberal arts education develops. If we reduce higher education to technical box-checking, we risk training students for roles that may not exist in five years.

Hampshire itself is proof. This is a school that produced Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o and legendary filmmaker Ken Burns— leaders who shape culture and thought at the highest levels. But here’s the hard truth: Belief in that mission is no longer enough to sustain it.

Avila University changing traditional structures

Nearly 300 colleges in the United States have closed since 2008. Hampshire is simply the latest, and it will not be the last. Colleges cannot operate the way they did even a decade ago and expect to survive. The market has changed, with students and their families making more pragmatic decisions. Institutions that fail to adapt will continue to close.

At William Jewell College, where I chose to return as an information security officer and professor, we’ve taken a different approach. We didn’t start with, “How do we preserve what we’ve always done?” We started with, “What does the world actually need, and how do we build it here?” This thinking led to the creation of new cybersecurity programming that blends academic rigor with hands-on experience within private sector partnership. We’re preparing students for one of the fastest-growing professions in the next decade. They don’t just learn theory — they operate in live environments, solve real problems and leave ready to contribute on Day 1. We teach students how to command AI, not fall victim to its vast utility.

Closer to home, Avila University is taking another step by reimagining a residence hall into space for businesses. That move creates revenue beyond tuition and connects students directly to opportunity. This is necessary because the old model of relying almost entirely on tuition while maintaining rigid structures is breaking down. And yet many institutions are still held back by a familiar mindset: “This is how we’ve always done it.”

That mindset is not just outdated. It’s dangerous. The biggest threat to liberal arts colleges isn’t external competition — it’s internal resistance, bureaucracy, risk aversion and painfully slow business operations. It’s the reluctance to challenge legacy systems that no longer serve the mission and tolerance for underperforming.

If these institutions want to survive, they need to fight that inertia. They need to think like builders again — creating programs aligned to workforce demand, forming real partnerships with industry, rethinking how campus assets are used and being willing to experiment and adapt quickly. They need to think the way they expect their graduates to behave when they enter the workforce.

Hampshire College’s closure should not just be mourned. It should be studied. The colleges that survive this moment won’t be the ones that held on the tightest to tradition. They’ll be the ones that had the courage to evolve.

Nick Gicinto is virtual chief information security officer and professor of practice in cybersecurity at William Jewell College in Liberty. He is a former CIA operations officer and owns Cyber 429, a company helping higher ed build cyber education ecosystems.