Limestone University to Close After 180 Years Due to Financial Shortfall

A 180-year-old private Christian school in South Carolina is going to close at the end of this semester because it couldn’t raise the $6 million it needed to stay open.

Limestone University officials said they were only able to raise a little more than $2 million after two weeks of intense fundraising and other actions. Because of this, the school had to close both its online campus and its Gaffney campus.

The number of students at the school had dropped by about half in the ten years before.

Randall Richardson, chair of Limestone University’s board of trustees, said, “Our Limestone spirit will live on through the lives of our students and alumni who carry it forward into the world.” “The good things that Limestone University did will live on even after we shut down.”

The school shocked its students, graduates, and community when it suddenly announced earlier in April that it was in such bad financial shape that it would have to close unless it got $6 million right away.

Even though more than 200 people gave about $2.1 million, it wasn’t enough. The institution says that the funds will be returned.

The lawmakers in South Carolina decided not to get involved because Limestone University is a private school.

In the past few years, a lot of private schools and colleges have closed, including Limestone. They are dealing with sharp drops in participation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as changes in the population.

Higher education statistics from the state show that the number of students enrolled at Limestone University, both in-person and online, has gone down from about 3,200 in 2014 to about 1,600 now. Limestone University promised that they would help students move to other schools.

Also, the shutdown could mean the loss of several hundred teachers and other staff in Gaffney, a city of about 12,500 people located on Interstate 85 between Charlotte, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

About fifty students met outside of the meeting of trustees on Tuesday night and hugged each other after getting the email saying the university was closing.

Daniel Deneen Jr., who lives in Myrtle Beach and plays football for Limestone, was shocked to learn that he would have to change his school goals.

Everyone was shocked when they learned that the school owed $30 million and didn’t know how they could pay it back. As Deneen put it, “the last two weeks have been very stressful because of finals this week.”

Limestone University has been around since 1845, and this Saturday will be its last graduation. Limestone’s decision to close this month is not unique to this area.

St. Andrews University will close on Sunday after the spring term. It is in Laurinburg, North Carolina, which is about 150 miles away. It is a branch school of Webber International University.