Lincoln College in Illinois Closing its Doors After 157 Years

Lincoln College in Illinois Closing its Doors After 157 Years

It’s a familiar story. The combination of lower enrollment and the pandemic proved fatal for the school.

Forbes reports:

Lincoln College In Illinois To Close After 157 Years

Lincoln College, a small private college in Lincoln, Illinois is closing its doors after 157 years of operation. The official closing date is May 13, 2022, at the conclusion of the current spring semester. After that date, all academic programming at Lincoln will cease.

The college, with an enrollment of about 1,000 students, is named after Abraham Lincoln. In addition to the main campus in Lincoln, it has maintained an extension site in Normal, Illinois.

According to a statement released by the college on March 29, the closure was necessitated by the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic which “dramatically impacted recruitment and fundraising efforts, sporting events, and all campus life activities. The economic burdens initiated by the pandemic required large investments in technology and campus safety measures, as well as a significant drop in enrollment with students choosing to postpone college or take a leave of absence, which impacted the institution’s financial position.”

The statement indicated that Lincoln College had survived other difficult circumstances, including the economic crisis of 1887, a major campus fire in 1912, the Spanish flu of 1918, the Great Depression, World War II, and the global financial crisis in 2008, but the pandemic caused a combination of setbacks that ultimately were too much to overcome.

The decision to close comes just two years after the college had seen record-breaking enrollment in 2019, with residence halls at maximum capacity. But after the pandemic hit, Lincoln experienced a significant decline in enrollment from which it not able to recover.

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