St. Andrews University, a small liberal arts college in Laurinburg, North Carolina, announced today that it will close in ten days, on May 5. In a statement on the school’s website, the president, Tarun Malik, said, “we have reached a point where financial sustainability is no longer attainable.”

It’s a sad day for the school’s students, faculty, staff, town, and proud alumni, a number of whom I have come to know and respect. It’s also a terrible burden on students and staff when a school closes with no notice.

Like many small non-profit colleges, St. Andrews has faced serious financial and enrollment challenges in recent decades.

St. Andrews’ problems took a troubling turn when the financially struggling school covertly became dominated by ultra-wealthy Floridian Arthur Keiser, one of the most powerful figures in the for-profit and career college industry. The parent non-profit organization of Arthur Keiser’s biggest school, Keiser University, donated millions to St. Andrews and its parent school, Florida’s Webber University. In turn, in 2020, Ellen Bernhardt, a long-time employee of Keiser University, became the interim president of St. Andrews; Arthur Keiser was for a time listed as a board member of Webber, along with various Keiser associates; and new satellite campuses of St. Andrews in the Carolinas were suddenly co-located with campuses of Southeastern College, a separate, for-profit school owned by Arthur Keiser and his wife.

Yet Webber’s then-president, Keith Wade, still told a reporter in response to Republic Report‘s investigative report detailing all these facts that Keiser “has no connection to St. Andrews whatsoever.” (Wade stepped down as Webber’s president in late 2023. He died a year later.)

It wasn’t entirely clear what Keiser was up to with his takeover of St. Andrews, but perhaps it was a way to expand and promote Southeastern College, or to merge it into a non-profit entity he controlled, as he had previously done with Keiser University.

Arthur Keiser eventually withdrew from his extensive involvement with St. Andrews, and the school’s fortunes continued sliding downhill.