Alliance University to close in August

There can't have been many avenues to exhaust. Totally a money thing. Accreditor couldn't keep them on because Alliance couldn't meet their financial viability standards. Money - if you ain't got it and can't get it... Declining enrollment etc. Familiar story. Most of the HBCUs that lost accreditation, did so because they couldn't meet accreditors' financial standards. As we're seeing, it affects non-HBCU schools as well.

 

Looked them up quickly. Founded 1882 and with multiple campuses. Higher Ed is a changing landscape. Maybe more so for religious institutions.

 

They’ve played a role in the NYC region, to be sure. They are a known entity.

Seems like a lot of colleges are part of their teach-out. Is that common? I’ve only generally noticed one or two colleges being part of a teach-out in such cases as this.

 

In 2018 Mount Ida College in Newton, MA, with about 1400 students, announced it was closing and selling its campus to UMass Amherst.

UMass Amherst was interested in the physical site close to Boston for future expansion of its own programs, but didn't extend automatic admission to Mount Ida students, and anyway was about 90 miles away.

UMass Dartmouth did extend automatic admission, but didn't have every degree program Mount Ida had (e.g., it didn't have funeral service), and it was 60 miles away.

More than 60 schools presented at a fair offering to admit transfer students individually from Mount Ida. Specific programmatic teach-out plans were filed with the state by four different colleges in addition to UMass Dartmouth (e.g., the funeral service associate's was taught-out by Cape Cod Community College out of their site in Bridgewater).

 

It's sad to see all these colleges shut down. I remember when I was doing my last full-time job search. One of the things I always looked at was each school's endowment.

My institution (public) has approximately $100m in endowment and another $60m in reserves. So, we're doing exceptionally well for years to come. We also have the highest endowment per student of all the state institutions.

 

As a senior in high school, I visited Alliance (i.e., Nyack) as a prospective student. It was the closest Bible college near my home at the time. I found it to be an interesting institution but the Lord had other plans. I am saddened to learn of its closing. The school trained countless missionaries and churchmen and was a central facet of the lower Hudson Valley region. You're right Garp, like so many other things, education is in a period of development and transition. We can only hope those developments serve students.