Grace University has announced they will be closing their doors after the 2017-2018 school year.
The announcement was made in a statement from the University's Board of Trustees Chairman Carlon Tschetter Tuesday morning. "This decision was extremely difficult, and one that was not reached without fervent prayer in seeking God’s will for Grace’s future and before exhausting all attempts to address the University’s financial challenges."
Tschetter's statement went on to say that the decision came at this time to make sure the academic year could be completed and to have enough time for those affected by the closure to transition out of the school. University leadership tried in vain to bring more money into the university by increasing enrollment, but were unsuccessful. "The financial impact of those issues reached a level whereby the amount of cash required to continue operations beyond the current year could not be reasonably attained without putting the University at significant risk."
Grace University CEO Bill Bauhard tells NewsRadio 1110 KFAB that they are working diligently to make sure their students are taken care of after they close. "We will be identifying potential schools that would be willing to accommodate transfers, or students that would come their way from Grace. That plan is in its early stages of development and that will be one of our top priority efforts over the next few weeks."
It was announced earlier this year that Grace would be taking over the former Dana campus in Blair, Nebraska, which Bauhard says is a plan that can be easily reversed. "We really hadn't gotten to far into the process. The project to move, the ink was just barely dry on the materials. So, we don't have to really undo anything, because we hadn't gotten far enough along to do something. It's not going to be a big effort on our part to turn the process away from moving to a process of closing."