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Antioch College to close in hopes of reopening


YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (AP) -- Antioch College, known for its offbeat approach to education, will close in 2008 because of a money shortage and will try to find enough funds to reopen four years later, the school said Tuesday.
Enrollment at the private liberal arts college has dwindled from more than 2,000 students in the 1960s to 400 this year, and a small endowment and heavy dependence on tuition revenue combined to hurt operations, the school said.
Efforts to balance the budget over the years through faculty and staff reductions and programming changes have eroded confidence in the academic program, said officials at the college, founded in 1852.
"At this point in time, Antioch does not have the financial wherewithal to continue as it is," spokeswoman Linda Sirk said. "It will be a much healthier thing to do if we close it now, stop the financial difficulties that we have, go through this process, and then open as a strong institution. You're going to see us again."
Students will be offered a chance to complete their degrees at Antioch University McGregor, an adult education school in Yellow Springs.
The school hopes that alumni will provide financial help, that it will attract investors and that it can develop more partnerships with the Yellow Springs community, said Mary Lou LaPierre, vice chancellor for university advancement.
Antioch doesn't grade classes, encourages students to develop their own study plans, and combines academic learning with experience through a co-op program in which students leave campus to work in various fields.
The school in southwest Ohio counts the late Coretta Scott King, "Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling and evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould among its graduates.
In 2000, death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, gave a taped commencement address. Hundreds protested nearby, including Faulkner's widow.
The college drew national attention in 1993 with its "Sexual Offense Prevention Policy" that required students to ask permission from one another if they wanted to have sexual contact, including holding hands.
The top reason students who are accepted decide not to attend is the poor facility conditions, said Antioch president Steven Lawry, who concluded the school's $30 million endowment was insufficient.
"That kind of investment in endowment-building just had not been done. The modern liberal arts college has to do that to survive," Lawry said.
The school will create commissions on facilities improvement and curriculum design, he said. Officials hope to recruit a class of at least 300 students for 2012.
"There's not another school like Antioch," said Rory Adams-Cheatham of Washington, D.C., a 21-year-old who graduated in April with a literature degree and is working for the school as an events manager. "This was where I had to be. It's really devastating."
The school has been a fertile ground for social activism, with protests from the Vietnam War era up to the Iraq war. In 1994, students took over a building for 32 days to protest plans to turn it into an admissions office instead of a student-activity center.
The school will have one more academic year, then suspend operations July 1, 2008. The school said it will work with students who want to complete their degrees at Antioch University McGregor; at other Antioch schools with degree programs in Seattle, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California; or at other colleges.

posted by rabbit @ 9:10 AM