The former president of now-closed Mount Ida College blames the school's shutdown on a last-minute change of terms in the planned merger with Lasell College.
Barry Brown, in his first interview since Mount Ida's closure, tells The Boston Globe that school administrators were so sure the merger would happen they accepted a new class of students.
But in March, six weeks before the end of the school year, Lasell officials told Brown that Lasell's lenders would not approve the merger.
Lasell College president Michael Alexander confirmed that his school's public debt holders would not quickly approve the merger because of Mount Ida's debt.
Mount Ida's closure threw the lives of hundreds of students, faculty and workers into turmoil. The Newton campus was ultimately sold to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
