Mills College, the first women’s college west of the Rockies, shocked Oakland and the broader Bay Area when it announced it would close as an independent institution and merge with Northeastern University in March 2021. For nearly 170 years, Mills served as a hub of women’s leadership, social justice and academic rigor. The sudden announcement highlighted how vulnerable small liberal arts colleges have become in today’s higher education landscape.
This turning point is the focus of a recent episode of Campus Files, a documentary-style podcast produced by Audacy. Hosted by Margo Gray and produced by Ian Mandt, the series investigates scandals and upheavals in higher education. Each episode works to clarify complex controversies, and the Mills story stands out as a striking example of institutional collapse intersecting with power dynamics.
Gray and Mandt approached the project with strong journalistic and audio storytelling backgrounds. Gray had previously worked on other Audacy podcasts as well as a series with a political journalist, while Mandt brought six years of experience at Audacy along with extensive work on investigative series.
Gray was drawn to the story because it promised something unusual. Accustomed to hearing about mergers and acquisitions in business contexts, she realized while researching Mills that this was the first time she had encountered the concept applied to a university. What stood out most was the stark contrast between the two institutions: Mills, a small liberal arts college for women, and Northeastern, a large, STEM-focused university.
“They could not be more different,” she thought.
During her research, Gray spoke with data consultant Matthew Hendricks, who suggested that Northeastern’s interest in Mills was likely driven by the college’s sizable endowment and manageable debt—a clear win for the university. For the students, however, the announcement was a shock. In the episode, Mills student Victoria Mayorga recounts her thoughts and emotions during the acquisition. Many students were forced to change their majors, and she described the experience as leaving her feeling hopeless, “like time stood still.”
Gray said, “The acquisition turned out to be challenging for many students. Victoria is representative of a lot of students at Mills.”
The acquisition presented profound cultural challenges for students, who watched the identity of their campus shift almost overnight. Mills had long been known as a small, diverse and socially conscious college, emphasizing social justice and community engagement. Suddenly, co-ed Northeastern students arrived en masse, the curriculum pivoted toward STEM and longstanding traditions, from graduation ceremonies to historic courses, were altered or eliminated.
Legacy students were relegated to virtual advisors in Boston, while incoming Northeastern students received preferential treatment in housing and class registration. For Victoria Mayorga and her peers, the changes were disorienting: The school they had chosen for its values and culture became almost unrecognizable.
By the end of her junior year, Mayorga faced an impossible choice. She wanted to preserve her memories of Mills as it had been, but staying meant enduring a radically altered campus and limited academic pathways. Ultimately, she decided to transfer to Northeastern’s Boston campus for her final year.
Adjusting to a university of 30,000 students after starting at a tight-knit community of 500 was difficult, and she even took time off to regroup. Yet Mayorga persevered, determined to earn her degree and ensure her diploma reflected the Mills legacy she had fought to honor, demonstrating resilience in the face of a campus transformation that had upended her education and community.
Beyond the Mills episode, Gray and Mandt see their work as a lens into broader patterns on college campuses. For both, higher education is a microcosm of society at large, a space where issues around power, money, inclusion and activism often surface first.
“Colleges are also a window into the future of the country,” Mandt said. “The issues that young people are raising are the same issues they’ll carry into adulthood—like how they interact with authority, how they organize, how they advocate.”
Gray echoed that sentiment, noting that the campuses they cover are not just sites of scandal but also of culture and community. Part of what draws them to these stories, she says, is that they’re not only relevant and important; they’re also highly engaging.
“Our goal is for listeners to walk away entertained and informed,” Gray said. “Colleges are this mythic place in our culture, and when something goes wrong there, it exposes the tension between what we idealize and what actually happens.”
In exploring scandals, the duo aims to balance scrutiny of institutional failures with empathy for the individuals affected. Many stories, including that of Mills, involve both systemic mismanagement and real human consequences. Mandt said that giving students, faculty or staff a platform to share their experiences can be empowering, turning what might otherwise be a distant report into a vivid human narrative.
“There’s an opportunity for us to give voice to the victims in these episodes,” Mandt said.
Looking ahead, the team has more episodes planned that explore both scandal and systemic issues, from the politics of research funding at Harvard to the consequences of hazing in a Cornell acapella group—the very group that inspired the movie Pitch Perfect.
Through it all, Gray and Mandt say they aim to capture the drama, the stakes and the human stories that lie at the heart of American colleges, showing that even in the most mythologized spaces, the realities of power, culture and community cannot be ignored.
