Antioch College, the alma mater of civil-rights activist Coretta Scott King and “Twilight Zone” television-series host Rod Serling, will close its doors next year because of declining enrollment and a shortage of money.
The 155-year-old liberal-arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, will suspend operations in July 2008 and consider reopening a new campus by 2012, according to a statement.
The college is the undergraduate residential program of Antioch University, which plans to keep operating its five nonresidential campuses around the country.
The college, founded in 1852 and led by educator Horace Mann as its first president, expects to have about 350 students and 160 full-time faculty and staff members next academic year. With an endowment of about $36 million, Antioch is similar to other small schools that rely on tuition revenue and have too few students to take advantage of economies of scale, an education researcher said.
“It takes more endowment to run these places,” said Charles Blaich, director of inquiries at the Center for Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. The center conducts research on liberal-arts education. “I know schools that have endowments of $100 and $80 million that are nervous.”
Cost cuts to balance the budget “have eroded the confidence students and parents have in the college’s academic program,” Antioch said in the statement.
Revenue from the university’s nonresidential campuses contributes about $1.6 million annually to the college, said university Vice Chancellor Mary Lou LaPierre.
Current and newly accepted students will be offered the option of completing their degrees at certain other campuses of Antioch University. The university has another nonresidential campus in Yellow Springs, as well as those in Seattle; Santa Barbara, Calif.; Los Angeles; and Keene, N.H.
Antioch University said it would set up a design and development commission with the intent of redeveloping the campus.
