century colonial style house that served as the convent for the Sisters of Mercy. There were also about half a dozen smaller structures that served various auxiliary purposes for the college community. Approximately 350 students could be accommodated in the college residence facilities. Other institutions for women in New Hampshire At one point, Mount Saint Mary was one of seven all-female institutions of higher education in the state of New Hampshire. Only two of these still exist, and have since become coeducational: Colby–Sawyer College (New London) and Rivier College (Nashua), the latter a Catholic school operated by the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. The other four, along with Mount Saint Mary, have ceased operations: Castle College (Windham), a two-year school that was also operated by the Sisters of Mercy; Notre Dame College (Manchester), a four-year school operated by the Sisters of the Holy Cross; Pierce College for Women (Concord), a two-year school, and Stoneleigh College (Rye), also a two-year school. Castle and Notre Dame both became fully coeducational, but even this policy could not sustain their existence. Closing of the college It remains speculative as to whether Mount Saint Mary could have done anything in order to preserve itself as an institution of higher education. Most of the all-female schools in New Hampshire that closed offered only two-year programs of study, and were simply unable to compete with the greater resources and less expensive tuition offered by nearby community colleges. For its part, Notre Dame College, the other four-year school that closed, was not saved by coeducation because its campus was completely hemmed in by private homes in a residential neighborhood, thereby precluding any opportunities to expand its buildings and resources. Mount Saint Mary did not have such a problem with its sprawling campus of , some of which it could have sold off as a means of stabilizing its finances, as most of the land was unoccupied. However, unlike Rivier College, which not only adopted coeducation but also created baccalaureate as well as master's degree programs in such fields as administration and management, communications, computer science and technology, fine arts, and additional health science fields which could be pursued during the days, evenings and weekends, Mount Saint Mary remained a traditional undergraduate day college for women with degree programs focused only on the liberal arts, nursing and teacher education. In effect, some would argue that the school in