What Does It Take to Earn the Public's Trust?

A recent story on the closures of Hampshire College and Anna Maria College has me thinking about a question I've been wrestling with for a long time.

The easy question is, "Who failed?"

The harder question is: how should society decide when an educational institution has earned continued trust, and when it has not?

Whether we're talking about a private college, a charter school, a traditional public school, or an emerging education technology, every educational organization begins by making a promise — to students, to families, to the broader public. In effect, every institution asks us to entrust it with something precious. That is an extraordinary obligation.

Importantly, I don't think this is primarily a story about bad people or bad institutions. Hampshire College, for example, earned a national reputation for changing lives, particularly for students who often flourished in an unconventional educational environment. Many educators and counselors had good reason to believe it could be a transformative place for students who might not thrive elsewhere. That legacy makes its current situation all the more heartbreaking.

Sometimes the failure isn't misconduct. Sometimes it's institutional optimism. Boards sincerely believe the next fundraising campaign, refinancing, enrollment rebound, merger, or philanthropic investment is just around the corner. Regulators hesitate because no one wants to trigger the very collapse everyone is trying to avoid.

Then the hoped-for solution never arrives.

Students and families pay the highest price.

To me, that's fundamentally a governance challenge. Organizations that ask for the public's trust — whether through taxpayer support, student financial aid, tax-exempt status, philanthropy, or simply by asking families to entrust them with their children — incur obligations that extend beyond their own stakeholders.

Public trust should neither be given nor withdrawn lightly. It should be earned continuously, through evidence, transparency, humility, and a demonstrated capacity to learn and improve.

I'm curious how others think about this. If you were designing a governance system for educational institutions, what evidence would convince you that an institution had earned the right to continue, to grow — or, alternatively, that it was time to intervene before students and families bore the consequences?