Clarks Summit University Closing

https://www.clarkssummitu.edu/

This is sad news.

 

Honestly, I think most of the small religious colleges and universities are going to be in the same boat. I feel the University of the Cumberlands would be in the same situation if they did not start to offering online advanced degrees.

 

Clarks Summit University (formerly Baptist Bible College) was in a tough spot. And I mean that geographically as much as anything. If you add up the degree granting colleges of Northeastern Pennsylvania you come up with around 13 different schools in Luzerne and Lackawanna County (depending on how you count the PSU campuses and excluding Penn Foster). BBC/CSU is, to my knowledge, the only one that was non-RA in the area as it was fully ABHE. They were a school of Ministry, primarily. It wasn't uncommon to find that a local Baptist pastor had attended school there. They did try to branch out into degrees in counseling. Though I have no idea how successful their graduates were in obtaining licenses.

Small school. Baptist college in a predominantly Catholic area. Surrounded, frankly, by better options for everything it offered except for their actual M.Div. and even that...why would you pick them over, say, Liberty?

Sad to see it close. Beautiful little campus.

EDIT: Immediately after submitting this I realized that I was incorrect. There are two other standalone non-RA schools. One is St. Tikhon's Seminary (ATS) and honorable mention for Johnson College which, for many years, was non-RA though it appears they took the plunge and got accredited by MSCHE.