Per the Univeristy's website: "The Urbana University Branch Campus announced closure on Tuesday, April 21, 2020, and will cease enrollments at the end of the 2020 Spring Semester."

 

 

Also from the school's website: "Campus officials will be working with officials at the NCAA and MEC organizations to obtain guidance on the most effective ways to transition those student athletes who wish to transfer to other institutions to continue their athletic endeavors."

This makes the second small college in Ohio to close in the 2019/2020 school year. Cincinnati Christian University announced their closure earlier in the year.

 

Cincinnati Christian University to close

Looking over some of their rosters, there are a handful of athletes out of high schools in Kentucky who will be looking elsewhere for college:

 

Barksdale, Darius (Tates Creek) Basketball

Burns, Maggie (Assumption) Volleyball

Kenworthy, Adam (Fern Creek) Baseball

Meyer, Ian (Newport Central Catholic) Baseball

Sanchez, Jillian (Fern Creek) Acrobatics & Tumbling

Another one bites the dust. How sad.

Looking over some of their rosters, there are a handful of athletes out of high schools in Kentucky who will be looking elsewhere for college:

 

Barksdale, Darius (Tates Creek) Basketball

Burns, Maggie (Assumption) Volleyball

Kenworthy, Adam (Fern Creek) Baseball

Meyer, Ian (Newport Central Catholic) Baseball

Sanchez, Jillian (Fern Creek) Acrobatics & Tumbling

 

I know there are a few HS seniors that had signed and were planning to play there as well.

Another one bites the dust. How sad.

 

This shutdown has likely sped up the inevitable for some colleges across the country. There are so many in America, in part because they sprung up in the 1800s when travel was difficult, so many communities had colleges to educate the people (they often taught students down to the lower grades - several in Kentucky did so). Now the colleges have had to steadily increase their prices and it has made it more and more difficult to recruit, especially against larger state colleges. Mix that with the notion that has began to prevail from many over the last couple of decades that colleges should serve as more of a trade school and less of a place of learning liberal arts and you've got a recipe for school closures. We'll see many more in the coming decade.