When Gown Leaves Town

Overnight, the fire department in Aurora, N.Y., lost a quarter of its volunteers. The sole local doctor found herself reassuring anxious patients that they would still be able to get treatment for heart disease and diabetes. And Jim Orman, mayor of the small upstate village, had to come up with $200,000 to keep the community’s water-treatment plant, operated for nearly a century by Wells College, running. “Do you want a public-health hazard on your hands?” he said.

All of this upheaval had a single cause: The abrupt announcement this spring by Wells, a private liberal-arts college, that it was closing its doors. The decision, made public just a week before final exams, left students — including members of an already-admitted freshman class — scrambling to find a new college for the fall. Professors, who had missed the academic hiring season, were out of a job.

The impact of college closures reverberates beyond the campus, though. Higher-education institutions are often among their region’s largest employers, and their graduates can feed into the local work force. Students keep the coffee houses and by-the-slice pizzerias humming. When their parents visit, they pay for nice dinners and dorm-room supplies.