In a brief statement on its website, the National Labor College announced on Wednesday that its board had “reluctantly decided to accept the inevitability of our closure” because of continuing financial difficulties. The beleaguered college, which began in 1969 as a labor-studies center to educate working adults who belonged to labor unions, has granted baccalaureate degrees since 1997, serving students both online and on its campus, in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.
Two years ago, the college prematurely ended a planned five-year distance-education alliance with a for-profit partner, a subsidiary of Princeton Review Inc., citing slow enrollment gains. In 2012 the college announced its intention to sell its 47-acre campus and move its academic programs entirely online. But The Washington Post reported in July that a deal to sell the property had fallen through.
The college’s president, Paula E. Peinovich, said in the statement that the college did not yet have a specific date for closure. College officials “will provide information as soon as we can detailing how the shutdown will proceed,” she said, adding that the process would probably take “many months.”
