Those who follow the state of higher education in the United States are unsurprised to see colleges and universities struggling financially, cutting programs, and in rare cases even closing altogether. In many cases, this is not much of a loss, as the current state of America attests. However, there are some institutions of higher learning in the U.S. that work tirelessly to form their students. I know because I went to such a college, a college that many of its alumni are now working to save from debt.
People are often surprised when they hear I got my bachelor’s from a school halfway up a mountain in New Hampshire with fewer than a hundred students. Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, a fiercely Catholic institution dedicated to forming young men and women in the intellectual tradition of the West, has always been small. But that has always been part of its charm, at least for me. When attending, I knew every student by name, whether because I passed them in the halls or because every student sang Gregorian chants and hymns together in the choir. It was there that I met some of my closest friends, including the best man at my wedding and the couple who will serve as godparents to my as-yet unborn second child.
Thus, I was greatly saddened earlier this November when, just after an extremely successful 50th anniversary celebration, it was announced that the board of trustees had decided the college would close after the graduation ceremony this May. The reason—as it so often is in this life—was lack of financial resources. The college’s debt is too great to deal with given the current levels of financial support from donors.
In America, there are just a few handfuls of colleges and universities that attempt to teach and operate in accordance with the teachings of Holy Mother Church, and the loss of this one would be a genuine tragedy. However, a grassroots group of alumni is working to save the school and ensure it becomes financially viable. We are not only looking for financial pledges (though those are necessary). We are also asking for prayers.
Hope and a plan for the future
On November 19th, just days after Magdalen’s board made their decision to close the school, a small group of alumni released a letter outlining a fourfold plan to make the school financially viable without losing its Catholic identity or dedication to the liberal arts.
The four pillars of this plan involve, first, retaining the distinctive program of liberal studies in the Catholic tradition, what one professor has termed “Magdalen classic.” As the school’s website states,
Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts calls students in their whole person to a transformative, Catholic, liberal arts education.
This education is ordered to human flourishing and communion, animated by the perennial questions, given shape by the classic books, and nourished by a vibrant liturgical and sacramental culture.
Joyfully Catholic in this ascent toward true freedom and a vision of the Good, Magdalen College calls all within her community to enter the great conversation of authors seeking wisdom that has unfolded across the ages, cultivating a life of virtue, poetic imagination, service, and life-giving fidelity.
This is the central mission of the school, and, if the alumni are able to save Magdalen, the program of liberal studies will remain untouched.
A graduate of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts stands in front of one of the school’s Marian grottos.
The second pillar of the plan is to add a program in the trades. Students of this program would receive basic formation in the liberal arts and take part in the school’s vibrant liturgical culture, but they would also receive training in lucrative trades such as carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC. This type of program has received increased attention in recent years, and several such schools have been founded. Magdalen would be ideally situated for such a program, not only of its pre-existing accreditation, but also because of the relationships it has with a number of tradesmen who have expressed interest in apprenticing students, and even in teaching for the program. Thus, if the necessary capital is raised, a professor I spoke with said the program could feasibly begin as early as this fall.
The third piece of the plan is St. Margaret’s Collegiate Academy. This program, which takes the patron saint of the disabled, St. Margaret of Castello, as its namesake, would allow young adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities to experience a Catholic collegiate community that honors their dignity within a vibrant spiritual and liturgical context. The program would be the first of its kinds in the United States. Occurring every summer, the academy would offer multiple two-week sessions for special needs children and their parents on Magdalen’s beautiful campus. Students and their families would take part in (1) ability-appropriate courses in the Catholic intellectual tradition, (2) beautiful liturgies, the rosary, and other devotions, (3) sports and other outdoor activities, and (4) an experience of the fine arts such as choir.
The Magdalen College Polyphony Choir singing “O Magnum Mysterium.
Many, many Catholic families have at least one child with developmental disabilities, and this program would thus fill a real need. In addition, this program would be welcomed by Catholic philanthropists, thus opening new sources of funding for the college. A fellow alumnus I spoke with said that this idea has been ‘lean-tested’ with Catholic leaders in the United States, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Finally (and most ambitiously), the alumni group would like to found St. Augustine’s Accelerated Catholic High School. Given the fact that the college is located on a 135 acre campus, there is ample room for this expansion. This boarding school would allow older students to take college-level courses in either the liberal arts or trades. Talented students would thus have the opportunity to move from the high school to Magdalen College proper and complete their undergraduate education in just two years of high school, thereby eliminating two years of tuition.
Through this program, gifted students would earn a high school degree and college degree in six years. In the last two years of high school, students would earn dual enrollment credits, and they would then be followed by two collegiate years with summer terms in between, leading to a B.A. in two more calendar years. This program would share administrative costs and some faculty with the college. National experts in Catholic secondary and postsecondary education would participate in the planning and founding of the school, and the curriculum would be modeled on the curriculum and common life of ‘Magdalen Classic.’
Our Lady Queen of Apostles Chapel at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts
The biggest hurdle to these ambitious plans is finding the financial support needed to deal with the school’s current debt. At this time, the alumni group is looking for pledges, and if they get enough pledges, they expect the board would happily reverse its earlier decision and move forward with these plans. Despite the school’s relatively small body of alumni, there has been a strong show of support. We raised around $70,000 dollars from 42 pledges in the first ten days.
There are many things that make Magdalen a special place. I could talk about the beauty of the choir, the reverence of the liturgies, and the quality of the education students are offered there. I could wax poetic about the mountains visible from the campus and the adoration chapel in each dorm. However, instead I will close with an anecdote that I think shows something, not about my own feelings for Magdalen College, but about the providence God has shown to the school.
In the 1984, Barbara, a first-year student at Magdalen, went to the president. She explained that, though she loved the college, she and her family simply weren’t going to be able to afford her continued attendance. She would thus not be returning the next semester. John Meehan, the president, told the young woman not to worry. He said that her family could pay what they could afford and he would figure out the rest. He asked just one thing in return. He took a VHS tape promoting Magdalen off of his shelf and handed it to the student. “Give this video to the richest man you know,” he said.
As it turns out, Barbara served as nannie for a family near Auburn, NY. The father was president and CEO of a national trucking company. She gave him the tape, and that man and his wife bequeathed $10 million to Magdalen College, which was used to build the ‘new campus’ (where the college still operates today) and enabled the college to relocate from the old and decaying Bedford Motel up to Warner, NH—and the rest was history: my history, and the histories of dozens of faithful, fervent Catholic families, priests, and religious now spread throughout The United States.
I do not know if the alumni of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, my beloved alma mater, will be able to raise the money needed to eliminate the school’s debt and make the school sustainable for the next fifty years. But I do know that God’s will shall be done, and I can only be thankful for the College’s past and pray for its future.
If you would like to pledge support for Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, more information can be found here.
Felix James Miller serves as senior editor at The European Conservative and is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. He co-hosts the podcast “Truth, Beauty, Comics!” Felix lives with his wife and two sons in northern New York state. Twitter: @FelixJMiller
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Alumni Fight to Save Magdalen, a Small Catholic College
Those who follow the state of higher education in the United States are unsurprised to see colleges and universities struggling financially, cutting programs, and in rare cases even closing altogether. In many cases, this is not much of a loss, as the current state of America attests. However, there are some institutions of higher learning in the U.S. that work tirelessly to form their students. I know because I went to such a college, a college that many of its alumni are now working to save from debt.
People are often surprised when they hear I got my bachelor’s from a school halfway up a mountain in New Hampshire with fewer than a hundred students. Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, a fiercely Catholic institution dedicated to forming young men and women in the intellectual tradition of the West, has always been small. But that has always been part of its charm, at least for me. When attending, I knew every student by name, whether because I passed them in the halls or because every student sang Gregorian chants and hymns together in the choir. It was there that I met some of my closest friends, including the best man at my wedding and the couple who will serve as godparents to my as-yet unborn second child.
Thus, I was greatly saddened earlier this November when, just after an extremely successful 50th anniversary celebration, it was announced that the board of trustees had decided the college would close after the graduation ceremony this May. The reason—as it so often is in this life—was lack of financial resources. The college’s debt is too great to deal with given the current levels of financial support from donors.
In America, there are just a few handfuls of colleges and universities that attempt to teach and operate in accordance with the teachings of Holy Mother Church, and the loss of this one would be a genuine tragedy. However, a grassroots group of alumni is working to save the school and ensure it becomes financially viable. We are not only looking for financial pledges (though those are necessary). We are also asking for prayers.
Hope and a plan for the future
On November 19th, just days after Magdalen’s board made their decision to close the school, a small group of alumni released a letter outlining a fourfold plan to make the school financially viable without losing its Catholic identity or dedication to the liberal arts.
The four pillars of this plan involve, first, retaining the distinctive program of liberal studies in the Catholic tradition, what one professor has termed “Magdalen classic.” As the school’s website states,
This is the central mission of the school, and, if the alumni are able to save Magdalen, the program of liberal studies will remain untouched.
The second pillar of the plan is to add a program in the trades. Students of this program would receive basic formation in the liberal arts and take part in the school’s vibrant liturgical culture, but they would also receive training in lucrative trades such as carpentry, plumbing, and HVAC. This type of program has received increased attention in recent years, and several such schools have been founded. Magdalen would be ideally situated for such a program, not only of its pre-existing accreditation, but also because of the relationships it has with a number of tradesmen who have expressed interest in apprenticing students, and even in teaching for the program. Thus, if the necessary capital is raised, a professor I spoke with said the program could feasibly begin as early as this fall.
The third piece of the plan is St. Margaret’s Collegiate Academy. This program, which takes the patron saint of the disabled, St. Margaret of Castello, as its namesake, would allow young adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities to experience a Catholic collegiate community that honors their dignity within a vibrant spiritual and liturgical context. The program would be the first of its kinds in the United States. Occurring every summer, the academy would offer multiple two-week sessions for special needs children and their parents on Magdalen’s beautiful campus. Students and their families would take part in (1) ability-appropriate courses in the Catholic intellectual tradition, (2) beautiful liturgies, the rosary, and other devotions, (3) sports and other outdoor activities, and (4) an experience of the fine arts such as choir.
Many, many Catholic families have at least one child with developmental disabilities, and this program would thus fill a real need. In addition, this program would be welcomed by Catholic philanthropists, thus opening new sources of funding for the college. A fellow alumnus I spoke with said that this idea has been ‘lean-tested’ with Catholic leaders in the United States, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Finally (and most ambitiously), the alumni group would like to found St. Augustine’s Accelerated Catholic High School. Given the fact that the college is located on a 135 acre campus, there is ample room for this expansion. This boarding school would allow older students to take college-level courses in either the liberal arts or trades. Talented students would thus have the opportunity to move from the high school to Magdalen College proper and complete their undergraduate education in just two years of high school, thereby eliminating two years of tuition.
Through this program, gifted students would earn a high school degree and college degree in six years. In the last two years of high school, students would earn dual enrollment credits, and they would then be followed by two collegiate years with summer terms in between, leading to a B.A. in two more calendar years. This program would share administrative costs and some faculty with the college. National experts in Catholic secondary and postsecondary education would participate in the planning and founding of the school, and the curriculum would be modeled on the curriculum and common life of ‘Magdalen Classic.’
The biggest hurdle to these ambitious plans is finding the financial support needed to deal with the school’s current debt. At this time, the alumni group is looking for pledges, and if they get enough pledges, they expect the board would happily reverse its earlier decision and move forward with these plans. Despite the school’s relatively small body of alumni, there has been a strong show of support. We raised around $70,000 dollars from 42 pledges in the first ten days.
There are many things that make Magdalen a special place. I could talk about the beauty of the choir, the reverence of the liturgies, and the quality of the education students are offered there. I could wax poetic about the mountains visible from the campus and the adoration chapel in each dorm. However, instead I will close with an anecdote that I think shows something, not about my own feelings for Magdalen College, but about the providence God has shown to the school.
In the 1984, Barbara, a first-year student at Magdalen, went to the president. She explained that, though she loved the college, she and her family simply weren’t going to be able to afford her continued attendance. She would thus not be returning the next semester. John Meehan, the president, told the young woman not to worry. He said that her family could pay what they could afford and he would figure out the rest. He asked just one thing in return. He took a VHS tape promoting Magdalen off of his shelf and handed it to the student. “Give this video to the richest man you know,” he said.
As it turns out, Barbara served as nannie for a family near Auburn, NY. The father was president and CEO of a national trucking company. She gave him the tape, and that man and his wife bequeathed $10 million to Magdalen College, which was used to build the ‘new campus’ (where the college still operates today) and enabled the college to relocate from the old and decaying Bedford Motel up to Warner, NH—and the rest was history: my history, and the histories of dozens of faithful, fervent Catholic families, priests, and religious now spread throughout The United States.
I do not know if the alumni of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, my beloved alma mater, will be able to raise the money needed to eliminate the school’s debt and make the school sustainable for the next fifty years. But I do know that God’s will shall be done, and I can only be thankful for the College’s past and pray for its future.
If you would like to pledge support for Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, more information can be found here.
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