This is your life,” he said, as two administrators standing nearby nodded in agreement. “If I were in your shoes, I would apply to all these schools, I would pray a lot, I would talk to my parents a lot. An unsuccessful foray into the world of for-profit online education, meant to help, may have only accelerated the downward spiral.Īt a recent meeting, Paul Glader, a journalism professor, told students in his department to do everything they could to secure a spot at another school. But it appears instead to have been undone by a pandemic-related decline in enrollment and revenue. “I really wanted to come to New York, where I knew I would be confronted with all sorts of ways of living and belief systems.”īefore the pandemic, the school dreamed of expanding, to give its brand of nondenominational Christianity a secure place in the country’s media and financial capital. “The one truth I am committed to is biblical truth,” said Matthew Peterson, 19, who said he grew up in a “homogeneous” Christian community in Ohio. Representatives of the college did not respond to messages seeking comment. In interviews, most said they hoped to stay in New York and transfer to non-evangelical schools, like Fordham University, Columbia University or the City University of New York. For them, King’s has been a pathway to a world beyond their lives back home, where roughly half were home-schooled or attended private, often Christian, academies. Most of its students are white, and many come from conservative households far from New York City. Its sudden decline has drawn national attention. But as the city’s only high-profile evangelical college committed to “the truths of Christianity and a biblical worldview,” it is more well known than its enrollment numbers - over 600 students before the pandemic, down to roughly half that now - might suggest. Now it appears likely the school will close, and school officials have been going from department to department to show students a list of schools that might accept them as transfer students. But what began as a handful of layoffs in November quickly escalated to a doomsday scenario. Administrators at The King’s College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Manhattan, have been meeting with students in recent weeks to deliver a grim message: All of you should find someplace else to go to school.īetween the pandemic and a business deal gone bad, the college had struggled for years.
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