Why a College Fighting for Survival Is Slashing Econ and Physics Majors
At Albright in Pennsylvania, the new president is cutting programs, selling art and real estate, and vowing not to hire anyone with tenure. Is this the way forward for liberal arts colleges?
Fencing that blocks the library construction at Albright College shows the plans for the long-delayed finished version.
Photographer: Danna Singer for Bloomberg Businessweek
The once and future Albright College library is a hulking, brutalist box that looms over North 13th Street in Reading, Pennsylvania, dwarfing the neoclassical academic buildings on either side and sticking out of every photo taken from the home-team stands at the football stadium across the street. None of Albright’s 1,100 students have ever set foot inside.
A decade ago, Albright launched a fundraising campaign to turn the old building into a gleaming new facility, “the Taj Mahal of libraries,” in the words of the college’s now-president. In 2019, before work had begun, engineers found that the existing facade was unsound, forcing Albright to close the building for what was supposed to be months of repair. Construction crews finally started work on the new library in 2023 but didn’t get far, largely because Albright hadn’t raised enough money to pay for the job. The library sat empty, the most visible symbol of an institution facing existential struggles with enrollment, retention and fundraising. Over three days on campus in September, several students mention to an inquiring reporter how sick they are of talking about what it’s like to go to a college without a library. At this point, says Ryan Elmore, a senior majoring in communications, “it’s sort of a meme more than anything else.”