Facing financial challenges and new opportunities for online expansion, Naropa University is selling its main campus in Boulder, Colorado. Administrators say the move is necessary to invest in future growth, but many alumni mourn the loss of a beloved location.
Naropa, founded in 1974 by Buddhists – whose influence still permeates the university – has faced a number of financial problems, including the costly impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising operating costs. The institution has lost money year after year for the past decade.
But the university has also invested heavily in online teaching following the pandemic. Authorities have added new programs, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, and enrollment has increased.
Those responsible are now planning to move operations to a smaller location about five kilometers from the current campus. The sale of the site includes an option to lease it for a further one to eight years.
With nearly half of the roughly 1,100 enrolled students now studying online or in a hybrid format, Naropa administrators say their need for physical space has diminished. They believe selling the campus will help fund new growth initiatives that will secure the university’s future. At the same time, losing the campus means giving up physical spaces that hold deep meaning for graduates and the local community, such as the Allen Ginsberg Library, named after the Beat poet who founded Naropa’s longstanding Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
Challenges and opportunities
Naropa President Charles Lief stressed that the sale of the campus was not a desperate move, but rather an investment in the future of the institution.
“The sale of the (main) campus is complex and will not generate any money for approximately two to three years as it comes with a number of complicated conditions,” Lief said. Inside Higher Ed“This sale is not about solving urgent financial problems. It is about generating investment capital so we can invest in new programs, in faculty, in students and possibly in some new facilities.”
Like many others saddened by the sale of the campus, Lief has close ties to the university. He was a student of founder Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the 1970s, then served as Naropa’s attorney and later as chair of the board of trustees before being named president in 2012. (His wife, Judith Lief, also served as Naropa’s president from 1980 to 1985.)
Lief acknowledged that Naropa “came out of the COVID pandemic cash-strapped” and, like many other institutions, saw enrollment decline during the pandemic. But the forced shift to online instruction has presented an opportunity for expansion, given the positive feedback from students and requests to the admissions office for online offerings, Lief said.
Naropa has focused on the online space and expanded its offerings, and student enrollment, which was around 900 for much of the past decade, rose to about 1,100 last year, as well as for this fall’s new class.
The needs of staff and teachers have also changed as employees have increasingly switched to teleworking.
“When we evaluated each project, we realized that a number of people no longer needed offices here. So we simply had more buildings than we needed to own,” said Lief.
While he disputes the notion that Naropa had to sell its main campus to avert disaster, publicly available financial records show the extent to which the university has struggled in recent years.
Naropa, which has an endowment of about $4.6 million (much of it restricted), has posted losses in eight of the past 10 fiscal years; a recent audit suggested there were “significant doubts” about Naropa’s ability to sustain operations. But the audit also pointed to a number of steps the university has taken to cut costs and raise money, including selling some buildings. Federal grants and tax credits for employee retention have also helped improve the bottom line.
With the sale of the main campus now under contract – details of the buyer are expected to be announced in about a month – Lief said the university can “invest in a future for Naropa that is not dependent on the economic pressures faced by many other colleges.”
Graduates’ Fear
When authorities announced the sale of the campus earlier this month, many alumni (or alumnx, as Naropa calls its graduates) expressed shock, anger and disappointment, even as some acknowledged the university’s precarious financial situation.
Keren Shemesh, who graduated from Naropa in 2004 with a psychology degree and now works as a clinical psychologist, has mixed feelings about the move. While she believes that by expanding distance learning, Naropa can expand its impact to more people, she has fond memories of how classes began and ended with meditation, communal yoga and other activities. She also fears that the “spiritual tradition” of the teachers will be lost.
“Expanding Naropa education virtually will allow Naropa as a company to reach more customers,” Shemesh wrote via email. “It will also inspire more spiritual seekers around the world. We are living in very critical times on the planet where suffering is on the rise. Buddhist practices teach people a great deal about how to deal with suffering, they provide practical coping tools (used in cognitive behavioral therapy), and they emphasize the need to help others.”
The Rev. Diana McLean, a Unitarian Universalist minister who earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Naropa in 2009 and later worked as an administrator at the Jack Kerouac School, called the sale of the university’s main campus “heartbreaking.”
She particularly noted the loss of the Naropa Performing Arts Center and the Ginsberg Library, citing the “family of writers who have worked there over the years.”
“I believe that some places become sacred not by their religious affiliation, but by what happens there,” McLean wrote via email. “Places that I or my Naropa classmates have described as such include the PAC, the Sycamore Tree (outside the Allen Ginsberg Library), the Tea House, the Print Shop, and more. For me, the PAC stage is the most sacred place on campus.”
McLean hopes Naropa students and alumni will have the opportunity to mourn the beloved institution, perhaps through “a special event at the PAC for all students and alumni where we have a chance to be in this place one more time and walk on the stage before it’s gone.”
Dollar and meaning
Selling assets is nothing new for financially struggling colleges. Some have sold large properties to generate revenue; others, faced with declining enrollment, have deliberately downsized their campuses to save money on maintenance and other costs.
And when colleges close, campuses are often sold (or repossessed) to pay off remaining debt. But Naropa is in the unusual position of being able to sell its main campus and still keep it open.
Mark DeFusco, senior consultant at Higher Ed Consolidation Solutions, said Inside Higher Ed that such strategies, although unusual, also have potential advantages.
“Most colleges believe that their building equipment is a huge asset. And I’ve always thought it’s a millstone around their neck,” DeFusco said. “It keeps them from being flexible, and it keeps them from penetrating markets that are easier to reach.”
DeFusco added that he liked Naropa’s proposal “in general as a strategy” and that the location in expensive Boulder made the deal even more lucrative.
But DeFusco also pointed to concerns reflected in Naropa’s audit about the campus’s ability to stay open, including cash flow issues. While he believes selling the campus is a smart move, he wonders if it’s “too late.”
However, Lief believes now is the right time for Naropa to sell the campus as the company pivots to online and hybrid learning and capitalizes on the growth potential of these modalities.
The move may come as a shock to alumni, but it’s not the first time Naropa has changed, Lief added. The university was founded in an old bus depot and later moved to a location above a downtown restaurant. It also held many classes in the gymnasium of a local middle school before settling on the current campus.
The deal, which he said will take at least a year to complete, is also structured so that Naropa can lease back the campus for several years: In the first three years, the lease costs are lower, after which the rent increases.
“We have the time and space to make the transition a good one,” Lief said.
By increasing online learning and introducing new programs, Naropa could attract 300 to 400 new students in the next few years, he noted, which would significantly change its financial outlook.
“The future of Naropa is forward-looking and quite bright,” Lief said.
