A local faith-based university that was in danger of losing its accreditation will close, officials with the school announced yesterday evening.
East Price Hill’s Cincinnati Christian University, founded in 1924, will shutter after the fall semester. Some of its 547 students enrolled in the school’s Center of Adult Learning and Leadership (CALL) program will be able to stay on until January 2021 to finish. The rest have the option of transferring to other area schools, including Mt. Saint Joseph University, Miami University, Xavier University and others.
“We are truly sorry to have to send this letter,” a missive to students from CCU’s board of trustees reads. “CCU has been serving students for almost a century, and we view all of you as friends and family. We will miss you, and we are thankful for the time we have had with you. It has been our great honor and privilege to work and learn with you, and we are excited to see where God will lead you in your lives and careers.”
CCU employed 19 full-time and 120 part-time faculty members, according to the school’s website.
As CityBeat reported earlier this year, CCU faced revocation of its credentialing by the Higher Learning Commission. That body accredits universities in 19 states. In a July 11 letter warning about the potential loss of accreditation, the HLC cited several concerns, including low student retention and graduation rates, the school’s precarious financial situation and CCU’s unusual leadership structure in which the university’s president Ron Heineman also served on its board of trustees and worked as the school’s chief restructuring officer on behalf of its main lender, Central Bank. HLC said that was a conflict of interest, writing that Heineman “considers the bank’s interests to take precedence over institutional interests.” Heineman contested that assertion.
The accrediting body gave CCU until Dec. 1 to present evidence it had improved on the areas of concern noted in the HLC’s July letter.
On some level, the problems seem to have roots in the changing landscape for faith-based higher education. As enrollment in seminary education at the school declined, CCU leadership sought to pivot to other models that could better sustain the school, seeking to beef up its athletic programs and attempt to attract more non-seminary students.
“Young people just aren’t entering the ministry like they used to,” Heineman told CityBeat this summer.
But school officials abandoned plans for a proposed $5 million athletic facility as the school’s true financial situation became apparent, and the new students brought in by the university’s shift in focus often needed more academic support. CCU’s student retention rate dropped to 51 percent in 2016 from 75 percent just two years earlier, though Heineman said it was on the rebound for the 2019 school year.
“These strategies have allowed the school to serve new populations,” a letter school officials released Monday read, “but have not overcome the financial challenges that face many private, residential colleges today.”
Next spring, Missouri-based Central Christian College of the Bible will open an extension campus in Cincinnati to offer seminary degrees, CCU officials have said. CCCB is accredited by the national Association for Biblical Higher Education group.
This article appears in Oct 16-29, 2019.