College closing left them adrift
Students say they’d found home in school
After a neighboring college in Lincoln, Ill., announced plans to downsize, Aundrae Williams and his friends joked that their school might be next. Then he saw his professors crying.
On March 30, after 157 years of history, its president, David Gerlach, announced the closure of Lincoln College forever.
Jaylah Bolden was stunned. Like many, she saw Lincoln as more than a school. She spent her freshman fall at another university but would ride the train five hours to central Illinois just to couch surf, sit in on classes, and sneak into the dining hall at Lincoln. By the time she officially transferred, it already felt like home.
“Lincoln was the first place in my life where I had peace,” said Bolden, who grew up house-hopping between relatives. “When the school closed, I didn’t have anywhere to go.”
Six months after Lincoln closed its doors in May, many still wonder if more could have been done to save the college. In the aftermath, students have struggled to adjust, sometimes returning to places they had hoped to leave behind. And Lincoln’s story is becoming increasingly common. According to Higher Ed Dive, nearly 30 nonprofit colleges have merged or closed permanently since the pandemic. What has happened to those left behind?
Lincoln College was a small private college in a rural town — the only higher education institution named after the US president during his lifetime. But instead of attracting local students, it drew many from three hours north: “Lincoln College was like a district of Chicago,” said Willie Spratt, a 2022 graduate and former class president. Even though the town is 95 percent white, the college was registered as a Predominantly Black Institution. More than 40 percent of its students were the first in their families to attend college and 58 percent came from households with an annual income of less than $30,000. Three in five students were Pell Grant eligible.
Students, alumni, and faculty described the community as deeply close-knit. And, for many, a “second chance.” “Lincoln was the first time in my life where I felt like I had a chance,” said past student Julia Figueroa. For some, it was also a haven from gun violence.
In February, Lincoln had just announced its second-highest spring enrollment in a decade. New employees were still being hired. But the school had been struggling with operating deficits for years. Between 2013 and 2018, its $40 million endowment was depleted by half. The pandemic crushed recruitment, retainment, and fund-raising efforts. And last December, a ransomware attack blocked access to institutional data. By the time administrators regained access in March, fall enrollment projections were far below expectations. President Gerlach announced the only way to keep the school open was through a miracle donation of $20 million.
Dozens of students confronted Gerlach expressing grief and frustration. In a video posted on Facebook, student Kewan Thomas told Gerlach, “We got kids in this room who might die when they go back to their city.”
Three months later, Norvell Meadows, a frequent visitor to Lincoln College, was shot and killed outside his grandmother’s home in Chicago.
“I couldn’t even fathom it,” Bolden said. Meadows’s experience at Lincoln mirrored her own: They had spent significant time on the campus even without being enrolled. “He was trying to keep himself away from the violence in Chicago,” she said.
“Everyone on campus knew Vell, everyone knew he didn’t go here, and everyone loved him,” Bolden said. “He was part of Lincoln.”
After the closure announcement, Klaudia Blaszczyk, a swimming recruit from Warsaw, was one of 60 international students sent scrambling to maintain their visas. “It was an extreme pressure on me,” she said. And with the war in Ukraine so close to her sister and single mother, she worried about what would happen if they needed to evacuate.
Students and employees desperately organized to attract major donations in a bid to save the college. “But as we started to get traction, that goal post kept moving,” said Scott Raper, a faculty member who helped lead student fund-raising efforts. In just a few weeks, the president raised the target to $50 million and then $100 million.
Gerlach said he had to raise the target after students and faculty started transferring to other schools, making the college even more difficult to sustain.
Gerlach ceased all fund-raising efforts after two weeks: “We could have operated another year. But that would have crashed the plane.”
According to the Illinois Board of Higher Education and Gerlach, a closeout team helped students transfer through the summer.
Williams was part of Lincoln’s last graduating class. He’s now getting his master’s and coaching college basketball.
Blaszczyk transferred to Culver-Stockton College, the only institution that accepted her within her visa’s time constraints. “It doesn’t feel like home here,” she said. “This wasn’t a choice that we wanted to make.” She gave up competitive swimming since the college doesn’t have a team.
Bolden is now enrolled at National Louis University in Chicago, where she studies criminal justice. But the pandemic’s effects compounded by the closure were too much for some of her friends, a number of whom are no longer enrolled in school. “They lost their faith,” Bolden said. “We didn’t give up on school. School gave up on us.”