For anyone wanting to see the cross-pressures facing institutions of higher education at the moment, the current difficulties faced by the King’s College in New York and New College in Florida provide excellent and instructive examples.
The King’s College is in the midst of a financial catastrophe that could lead to its imminent closure, and that at a point in the academic year when the hiring cycle for academic year 2023-24 is coming to an end. Faculty members in particular face the very real possibility of hardship and professional catastrophe through no fault of their own, the college’s fate apparently being the result of dependence upon a narrow donor base whose principal member is now deceased.
As this occurs at the same time as Trinity International University in Chicago has announced that it is moving all of its undergraduate degree programs online for next year, the question of income streams for Christian institutions with small endowments is clearly pressing in with some urgency as an older generation of Christian philanthropists passes away.
