Dive Brief:
- The North Coast College, a for-profit in Ohio, plans to close at the end of August after years of financial struggles and accreditation issues.
- In a letter posted to North Coast’s website, President Milan Milasinovic said the college will shutter Aug. 30 after 58 years in business.
- “The decision to close the college comes after careful consideration of various factors, including shifts in educational landscapes and evolving community needs,” Milasinovic said.
Dive Insight:
North Coast’s accreditor, Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, put the institution on probation beginning in 2022.
At the time, ACCSC found that North Coast did not meet its standards on management, financial structure, student achievement and required reports, and said that the college “failed to demonstrate successful student achievement” in any of its reportable programs.
Among other issues, North Coast failed to provide financial statements to ACCSC. At the time, the college blamed the pandemic, telling the accreditor that its “inability to conduct annual audits 2020 and 2021 on time is a direct result of a national emergency.”
North Coast also showed steeply falling graduation rates over the five years between 2017 and 2022. Only four of the colleges’ had been operating long enough to report graduation rates — fashion design, fashion merchandising, graphic and web design, and interior design.
Most degrees within all four of those programs reported graduation rates of 50% or higher in 2017. But that dropped to 25% or less — in some cases 8% or lower — by 2022.
In September, ACCSC voted to keep North Coast on probation — instead of pulling its accreditation entirely — so that the college could finish teaching out its remaining students.
As of late March, North Coast had just eight students, seven of whom were set to graduate this spring and another at the end of August.
North Coast was founded in 1966 by fashion designer Virginia Marti-Veith, who opened the college after being unable to find expert staff to run a bridal salon she owned. Milasinovic succeeded Marti-Veith as president in 2015.
For-profit colleges have been steadily closing since their peak in the 2012-13 academic year. Since then, the number of for-profit institutions eligible for student aid has fallen more than 37% to 2,164 in the 2022-23 year, according to federal data .
Take another for-profit, Mountain State College, in West Virginia, which closed last month.
The college ceased operations on March 31, according to its website. The only other information the website provided was that students can receive their transcripts through West Virginia Junior College.
The college, founded in 1888, offered associate programs in dependency disorder technology and medical assistance as of last year. It was also accredited by ACCSC.
Mountain State had just 14 students in its last term and cited dwindling student numbers as the reason for the closure, Judith Sutton, the college’s longtime director, told the Parkersburg News & Sentinel. The newspaper also reported that West Virginia Junior College was accepting transfer credits from Mountain State students.