Concordia College New York to Close in Summer of 2021

Concordia College New York to Close in Summer of 2021

Read below and pay close attention to the comments from the school president. They describe the current situation for so many schools.

Inside Higher Ed reports:

Another Concordia College Closes

The Concordia University system must brace for yet another closure. Concordia College New York, a small, Lutheran liberal arts college in Bronxville, N.Y., will close this summer, it announced Thursday.

Iona College, a private Roman Catholic institution in nearby New Rochelle, N.Y., will purchase the Concordia campus. The two colleges are also developing a teach-out plan for Concordia students to complete their degrees at Iona.

The decision to close Concordia was pre-emptive, said John Nunes, its president.

“The two paths that financially challenged institutions go down is either the precipitous close — ‘oops, we ran out of money, and now we have to close’ — or, the long, lingering, threadbare existence,” Nunes said. “In January, our board decided that they didn’t want to go down either of those two paths.”

Concordia’s closure announcement leaves only six institutions in the Concordia University system. It began to shrink eight years ago, when Concordia University Ann Arbor was annexed by Concordia University Wisconsin in 2013. Five years later, Concordia College in Alabama, a historically Black college, closed due to falling enrollments and mounting debt. Concordia University in Portland, Ore., announced in February that it would close, citing a challenging and changing higher education landscape.

Concordia College New York, like the three institutions that closed before it, has faced increased financial pressure as tuition discount rates and operating expenses continue to rise. It has limped along for decades; in 1987, its accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, said the institution’s finances were “precarious,” Nunes said. The college’s original buildings — designed by Edward Lippincott Tilton, who helped design Ellis Island — are old and in need of maintenance.

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