Dive Brief:
- The King's College, a Christian nonprofit in New York City, will formally close following two years of no classes and failed efforts by its leaders to find a path to stay reopen.
- The New York State Education Department gave the college until Tuesday to present a plan for resuming operations, a deadline it is unable to meet, trustees said in a message posted last week.
- The liberal arts institution has been stuck in limbo since 2023 and under financial strain long before that. Now the board will work with state authorities to dissolve the college.
Dive Insight:
Trustees at the King's College had sought to find "strategic partners with a mutual vision for excellence in Christian higher education in New York City."
"Despite a thorough search for such a partner, the Board has been unable to secure the support necessary," they said in their closure message.
The college's alumni association will remain active, and those seeking copies of their transcripts can do so through the National Student Clearinghouse, the trustees said. The board did not go into further details but said more information on the closure process is forthcoming.
While the King's College only just announced its formal closure, it stopped accepting new student applications at the end of spring 2023 and announced that July that it would not offer fall 2023 classes.
No educational activity has taken place at the college since, according to the New York State Education Department.
The Middle States Commission on Higher Education formally pulled the college's accreditation at the end of August 2023 and classified the King's College as an "unapproved institutional closure."
Yet the college’s board of trustees continued to pursue a path forward.
"Whether or not the College is able to operate in the coming school year, we will need additional funds to finish our course or move forward," the college said in a call for donations in spring 2023.
Founded in 1938, the King's College had a track record of defying the odds and resurrecting itself during times of significant turmoil, often through high-value donations.
The college shuttered in 1994, only to reopen five years later after receiving another Christian college's assets upon its closure.
The King's College faced financial challenges in recent years due to declining enrollment. In fall 2017, the institution enrolled 555 students, according to federal data. Five years — and one pandemic — later, it had just 326.
The college attempted to survive through donations again in 2023, announcing at the start of the year that it would seek to raise $2.6 million by the end of the spring semester.
But the effort was hampered from the start. The donor pool on which the King's College traditionally relied on had begun to shrink. In some cases, older patrons, such as Richard and Helen DeVos, died. Their estate gave the college a final donation in 2019.
The institution christened a newly opened dorm DeVos Hall that year, though the King's College sold the residence hall a few years later.
In another case, a partnership with businessman Peter Chung dwindled after his company's efforts to boost the college's online enrollment didn’t pan out.
And amid that fundraising process, a junior at the college working as a development assistant became solely responsible for donor management after her supervisor — the only other person in the department — resigned, per reporting from ReligionUnplugged.
"I heard at the same time that everyone else did that we needed to raise $2.6 million, but who was going to do that? Were they expecting me to? Who was going to tell me how to do that?" the student told Religion Unplugged, adding that she had held the position for less than a year.
In the end, the fundraising campaign only garnered $178,000.
