Institutions of Higher Education, and specifically Christian higher education, are increasingly shuttering programs and even their doors entirely in response to reduced enrollment and financial pressure. I faced this reality personally at New York City’s The King’s College as a student of the first class unable to receive a diploma from King’s (I completed my senior year at another institution). Now, a year after the college halted classes, King’s officials have announced a strategy for reopening its doors.
While restoring The King’s College in New York City is by no means an easy task, its mission to cultivate leaders who are grounded with a biblical worldview in order to transform culture is worth fighting for.
Though small in number averaging 400-500 students, King’s maintained a high profile and partnered with the IRD as one of three founding co-publishers for Providence, the IRD’s foreign policy journal for Christian Realism. Even before facing financial peril, the college parted with a number of well-known administrators including Marvin Olasky and Dinesh D’Souza, closing under King’s President Stockwell Day, a former Canadian politician.
In the Spring 2023 semester of my Junior year, King’s greeted students with a shocking message: the school needed $2.6 million to remain open (only $178,000 was ultimately raised). The crisis highlighted persistent flaws in the college’s business model. For years, the college relied upon mega-donors, such as Richard DeVos and Bill Hwang, to bridge spending deficits.
King’s may have been unable to bridge the gap with donations in part because the school struggled to unite alumni from its different iterations. An older demographic able to give larger amounts to King’s attended classes at Briarcliff Manor in upstate New York. With many Briarcliff alumni still considering their experience the “College’s heyday,” King’s struggled to connect them to the college’s current form. Their experience attending classes in the castle-like mansion with a student body of 870 students in 1980 simply did not resemble the Class of 2023, who walked through Wall Street to reach a campus consisting of three floors in Manhattan with a student body nearing 400 students. King’s struggled to show Briarcliff alumni that the mission, spirit, and institution were the same.
Furthermore, pushed into crisis, the King’s College turned to Peter Chung, another billionaire and self-professed Christian with a shady record. During the final semester of the King’s College, King’s Journalism Professor Paul Glader wrote a substantial article detailing multiple circumstances where Primacorp and other groups related to Chung partnered with Christian colleges and universities forced to close shortly thereafter. In one instance, when Primacorp failed to save Quest University and was accused of not fulfilling its obligations, the Canadian for-profit took over its real estate.
Primacorp was supposed to “provide resources and expertise regarding student recruitment, marketing and fundraising” as well as development of an online program. Per the arrangement, Primacorp would keep the overwhelming majority of profits from the online program which King’s hoped would boost admissions to its brick and mortar school. It was unsuccessful.
It remains an open question why other Christian universities or institutions would potentially be interested in pursuing partnership with King’s, especially after loss of its accreditation and the sale of its one concrete asset to settle debts.
The flaws of the King’s College were chiefly administrative. Due to circumstances beyond control (for example, the pandemic) and some that could have been managed better, King’s was forced to shut its doors. Yet, until the end, 99 percent of King’s students were employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation. Moreover, the King’s College demonstrated the quality it offered by sending its students to top law schools including Harvard and Yale, to positions on Wall Street, and to dominant media networks including NBC and Fox.
Unlike many Christian higher education institutions, King’s did not pursue the Benedict Option: it did not exist in a small town or secluded in nature, rather it lived in the heart of New York City where students had no choice but to engage with a culture often opposed to their views. In seeking to educate effective Christian leaders that can engage with, navigate, and influence an increasingly hostile culture, we cannot do much better than in New York City.
Moreover, with the closing of Alliance University, there are currently no evangelical Christian colleges in New York City. While the King’s College Politics, Philosophy, and Economics core was its mainstay, it also attracted a significant percentage of its students through its Media, Culture, and the Arts program. Again, if Christians are to lead and exist within culture, they should study in one of the biggest centers for American culture.
The King’s College did not close because it lacked success. It struggled helping other Christian institutions see the importance of its mission in developing a biblical worldview, transforming society by preparing students for careers “to shape and eventually lead strategic public and private institutions,” and by encouraging faculty to engage with culture through writing and speech. While perhaps using different wording, this mission is one shared by many fellowship programs, Christian schools, and Christian institutions. It is a mission worth preserving and one that many institutions are already engaged in.
Although pursuit of partnerships has failed in the past, perhaps King’s will make one more return. Even if it cannot be The King’s College, there should be a college for the King in NYC.
More:
A student-run project, TKC Letters, features collected personal stories from King’s students capturing the spirit of The King’s College and why institutions like it matter.
Comment by David on January 31, 2025 at 7:17 am
Due to low birthrates, the number of potential college students has fallen off and appears to have entered a period of steady decline. Also, students are less attracted to liberal arts and now focus on STEM careers which have more likely chances of earning a decent living. Religion does not have much of a place in STEM.
The Baby Boom is long over and with it, the rapid expansion of schools and higher education. If one looks at more extreme cases such as Japan, schools, colleges, even whole towns have closed for lack of population. Only immigration maintains the US population.
Comment by Robert Tanzie on February 3, 2025 at 4:30 pm
Low birthrates? Maybe try recruiting less from the declining white population and effectively reach out to the burgeoning black, Asian and Latino population – many of whom are Christian.
Comment by Richard S. on May 22, 2025 at 7:38 am
Excellent article. I am in accord with James Davison Hunter (To Change the World, 2010) and Tim Keller (Decline and Renewal of the American Church). The closing of the King’s College was an serious failure of vision on behalf of Christian philanthropists. The closing was a signal of spiritual weakness, intellectual weakness and lack of imagination. It must be reopened. The world must see a Christianity that is not prone to failure in basic tasks and which cannot see the way out of its deepening reputational crisis, features of which are, according to Prof. Hunter: anti-intellectualism, high tolerance of mediocrity, and failure to establish institutions in the major cultural centers.