By Kathleen Moore | Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS)
Albany — After 103 years, The College of Saint Rose is closing its doors.
The school’s Board of Trustees voted Thursday to close at the end of the academic year after the May 11 graduation, according to sources familiar with the action. While the school had made no announcement by Thursday afternoon, one source shared a partial draft of a “questions and answers” document being developed for discussions with students. That draft laid out the timeline.
The closure means hundreds of people will lose their jobs, students will be forced to transfer to another school, and 87 properties — almost all of them clustered in the Pine Hills neighborhood — will be left vacant.
In fall 2022, there were 118 full-time faculty and 107 part-time faculty, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. There are 500 to 600 employees in total.
For the city of Albany, the closure — first reported by WNYT — also means the college’s properties in the one square block of Madison Avenue, Western Avenue and Partridge Street will become empty. Most of them are zoned “multi-use — campus/institutions,” which allows a wide variety of options, from residential to retail.
College officials have in recent days attempted to secure emergency funding from the state, county and city in an effort to stay open. While the responses were encouraging in terms of officials saying they wanted the college to stay open, none of those entities said they could immediately offer help.
The college has grappled with shaky finances for years as its enrollment steadily dropped. In 2020, its accreditor began requiring the college to provide proof of “improved financial viability” every year. In June, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education said the college’s accreditation was in jeopardy because of its fiscal situation. Saint Rose was given six months to make improvements and a Jan. 16, 2024, deadline to show that it had…
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