The King’s College loses accreditation, poised to close after years of financial woes

The Kng’s College is poised to close after years of financial hardship.

File photo courtesy The King’s College/Facebook

Evangelical liberal arts college The King’s College has announced it will not be offering classes for the fall 2023 semester, following months of speculation that the institution will shutter permanently.

The school, which has long called itself the “only Christian liberal arts college in New York City,” has always been small — with an enrollment class of under 600 students prior to the pandemic. 

But facing a crippling economic situation coupled with dwindling enrollment, administrators announced last week that classes will not be available and that many faculty or staff positions have been terminated.

King’s, a Christian non-profit school established in 1938, had always relied on donations and fundraising to operate and has on at least one occasion has only remained open due to last-minute donations from generous benefactors. 

Since 1999, King’s has experienced extreme financial deficits. To combat this, the school partnered with Canadian for-profit educational company Primacorp Ventures Inc. in 2021 with a goal of focusing on “student recruitment, marketing and fund-raising.” 

But the partnership couldn’t save King’s, which saw mass layoffs in November of the following year and the eventual resignation of school president Tim Gibson, who had orchestrated the Primacorp partnership.

Students were encouraged to apply to other universities as the financial situation became more and more dire. 

This past February, students residing in the school’s Brooklyn-based student housing  received eviction notices as King’s allegedly stopped paying rent at the building, as first reported by the school’s newspaper the Empire State Tribune.

The students were never actually evicted, but it appeared the school broke its lease with the building’s management company in May.

“The school didn’t…