Dartington Hall Trust subsidiary, Schumacher College Foundation, voted on 27 August 2024 to discontinue accredited courses with immediate effect. These include all courses presently supported by University of Plymouth: BSc, MA and PGDip.
It is with great regret that this decision has had to be made in a very short space of time. The rationale and background is set out below, but our overwhelming priority is the needs of students: we will support every student in achieving the best possible outcome for alternative course arrangements or an agreed withdrawal. We acknowledge that this will be a difficult time for students and recognise the impact that this decision will have on many of them, in particular international students with related visas and those in receipt of student funding.
All students are requested to make contact with Dartington for further guidance on next steps.
In the first instance, please contact studentconsult@dartington.org to confirm receipt.
This is the correct and most efficient channel of communication. Any contact from students outside this channel will be redirected to the correct route.
Students should not return to Schumacher’s Dartington site in September 2024 unless directed otherwise by the consultation team. Your course will not be continuing in 2024/25.
We expect to complete any remaining marking and associated final results for 2023/24 during the autumn.
Dedicated staff will be able to open individual discussions with students in line with the Student Protection Plan (link below) that all students are covered by relating to matters including:
- Outstanding dissertations
- Marking timetable and forthcoming published results
- Resits
- Potential for transfer to alternative H.E. institutions
https://campus.dartington.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/StudentProtectionPlan.pdf
Students are also reminded that the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) provides a free service to review cases in which satisfactory agreement between students and providers cannot be reached when existing arrangements are discontinued.
Schumacher College will contact individual students as early as possible in w/c 2 September 2024 to discuss courses of action case-by-case and a timeline of actions.
Rationale for this development
Schumacher College (“Schumacher”) continues to incur substantial monthly losses and its ultimate parent, Dartington Hall Trust (Dartington), is unable to underwrite this deficit indefinitely from its limited reserves. The Dartington Board continues to consider viable options for the College to sustain itself, including a proposal from the College’s learning leadership team to secure independence from Dartington, as well as continuation of economically productive courses.
While part of Dartington’s historical role as a charitable trust has been to provide financial support to its long-established learning activities, in this case Schumacher, even when they are unable to break even, the commitment does not extend to risking the future of the whole trust and estate. This position was reached in autumn last year, when the very real prospect of appointing administrators prompted the trust to explore the possibility for a turnaround. In the absence of further permitted land sales or availability of assets for disposal, the only remaining option was to reduce operating losses and develop a model for the estate to sustain itself, after decades of shrinking to survive.
In any event, monthly losses have continued to grow. Fees are not covering salaries and other
day-to-day costs. The college’s Learning Leadership team has, for some months, been reviewing and considering the accommodation and resource footprint for the delivery of Dartington’s learning provision. However, shorter, unaccredited courses planned by Schumacher for 2024/25 have met with disappointing bookings.