St. Catharine College, in central Kentucky, will close its doors in July after 85 years of operation, its Board of Trustees
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St. Catharine College, in central Kentucky, will close its doors in July after 85 years of operation, its Board of Trustees announced on Wednesday.
In the statement, the board’s chairman, John Turner, said the U.S. Department of Education’s withholding of student aid from several programs was a key source of the financial strain that led to the decision to close. St. Catharine has asserted that the department failed to pay back “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in financial aid, WDRB.com reported. The college sued the department earlier this year.
St. Catharine had also taken on new debt in recent years from the construction of buildings, according to the board’s statement.
“Without the enrollment and with the DOE’s chokehold on our cash flow, the debt is simply not manageable,” Mr. Turner said.
Administrators at the college said they had reached out to other institutions to establish teach-out plans for current students, and summer camps and classes will continue as scheduled, according to the statement. The college was expected to enroll a class of around 475 students in the fall semester. It employed 118 full-time faculty and staff members, as well as numerous part-time staff members and adjunct instructors.
St. Catharine joins Dowling College, in New York, and Burlington College, in Vermont, on a growing list of small liberal-arts colleges that have closed their doors recently for financial reasons.
