Small Christian Pennsylvania College to Close Due to Fiscal Woes

(Bloomberg) -- Clarks Summit University in Pennsylvania is the latest religious school to announce it will shut its doors due to financial stress.

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The school’s closing highlights the brutal landscape for small colleges grappling with enrollment declines and rising costs. Those challenges can be particularly acute for religious colleges, which confront the same issues secular schools do while struggling to appeal to a declining number of young people who say organized faith is a part of their lives.

“The Board of Trustees and employees have worked to overcome the most recent challenges and have exhausted every viable solution to bridge a significant financial gap. Despite all efforts, the financial gap remains,” CSU said in a statement dated July 1 on its website.

“Due to these financial circumstances,” the school said it “is unable to offer classes in the fall.”

CSU, established as a New York seminary over 90 years ago by a group of pastors and educators, began with just 40 students. It had over 500 students as of fall 2022, down 20% from a year earlier, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

CSU said it will help existing students transition to another university and students enrolled in summer courses will continue until completion.

The school moved to Pennsylvania in the 1960s and started offering online classes in the late 1990s. It achieved university status with the Pennsylvania Department of Education in 2015, according to its website.

Last week, Eastern Nazarene College, a small Christian college about 10 miles south of Boston, said that it would close because of financial pressure.

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