Hampshire College is facing problems in part because sensationalist news articles paint an erroneously hopeless picture. Unfortunately, a highly influential Boston Globe article originally titled, “Dying, Sputtering” fits into that category. Hampshire’s accreditor, The New England Commission on Higher Education (NECHE), has its home office in Boston, and the Globe is a prominent publication that likely gets its attention.

NECHE has been closely monitoring Hampshire’s finances and turnaround plan for years, but less than a month after the Globe article, NECHE announced at their annual review of Hampshire in June that the college must show cause, meaning that it’s possible that Hampshire could be put on probation or lose accreditation because of insufficient institutional resources.