Universities Weblog

(Source: Antioch University)

Antioch University announced it will close its main undergraduate college, located in Yellow Springs, OH. Plans now are for the college to reopen in some form in 2012.

From InsideHigherEd:

Antioch University announced Tuesday that it would suspend operations of its main undergraduate college - which has played a historic role in American higher education - at the end of the next academic year. All of the approximately 40 faculty members teaching at the college will lose their jobs. Antioch's other campuses, which focus on graduate programs and nontraditional students, will continue.

Antioch's official announcement said that the college could reopen as soon as 2012, in some new form. But in an interview Tuesday evening, the university's chancellor used "if" to describe a prospective reopening. And several people at the college said that they were not sure how the financial problems could be solved and the campus rebuilt in a few years.

Low enrollment and a small endowment were blamed for the decision. For the coming fall semester, 125 new students had been expected, which would have brought total enrollment to just over 300.

Antioch was founded in 1852, with Horace Mann serving as its first president. The college played a role in the abolitionist movement and was an early institution to admit students who were women or black. In the 20th century, Antioch was among the pioneers in "co-op education" in which students alternated positions of work all over the country with their education at the Yellow Springs, Ohio, campus. Antioch was particularly notable in that the education was focused on the liberal arts, and the college was known for turning out graduates who went on to play major roles in intellectual life and social activism, people like Clifford Geertz and Stephen Jay Gould and Coretta Scott King.

Read the rest here.

Good luck to the Antioch folks. Tough road ahead.

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