Mount Ida College Trustees Announce Closure

The Board of Trustees of Mount Ida College announced today that the institution will close and agreement has been reached for acquisition of the campus by the University of Massachusetts.  The Mount Ida website includes statements from the trustees and the institution's president, Barry Brown, along with an F.A.Q. section for students and others interested in learning more about the agreement.

Mount Ida was founded in 1899 on Mount Ida Hill in Newton Centre, MA by George Franklin Jewett and Abigail Faye Jewett.  It closed during the Great Depression and was reopened by William F. Carlson and his son F. Roy Carlson in 1939.  Mount Ida was accredited as a junior college in 1961.  It merged with Chamberlayne Junior College in 1987 and the New England Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences in 1989.  Mount Ida offered baccalaureate programs after 1998 and graduate degrees after 2009.

You can also read a press release, "Mount Ida College reaches agreement with UMass regarding educational continuity for students with acquisition of its campus."

Laura Krantz of the Boston Globe reported on the closure and acquisition, "Mount Ida College to close; UMass to acquire Newton campus."  Krantz offers context for the decision and includes comments from students.

If you are interested in recent trends for closures, mergers,and acquisitions access College Closures since 2009 in the index at the right of any College History Garden page.  There are separate tabs for non-profit closures, for-profit closures, and one for mergers and acquisitions.  Each tab includes basic information for the institutions, i.e., Carnegie Classification, sector, accrediting agency, and the IPEDS unitid.