The College of Saint Rose in New York will close permanently due to financial challenges, ending its 103-year span in higher ed. 
The College of Saint Rose
The school’s Board of Trustees voted Thursday to close at the end of the academic year, after May 11 graduation. The closure leaves 500-600 employees without jobs, forces students to continue their education elsewhere, and tens of properties vacant.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the school had 118 full-time faculty and 107 part-time faculty in Fall 2022. The school’s various properties in the city of Albany will become empty, though most of them are zoned to allow several kinds of uses, from residential to retail.
As for the students, their fates remain unknown. According to a 2022 study, 47% of students at schools that closed transferred to another one – and 26% of them took at least a year off before returning – meaning only about a third of students immediately continued education after school closure.
The transferability of all of their academic credits also remains uncertain. Saint Rose will have to make “teach-out” agreements with schools willing to accept their students and credits, a process that may come with some discrepancies.
Saint Rose faced financial issues for years as enrollment declined, even putting its accreditation at risk. The school had 2,200 undergrads in 2020, but only about 1,800 in 2022.
“We are in close communication with city and county stakeholders, state and local government leaders, academia, and developers to ensure that we are all working together to reimagine the CSR campus to minimize the impact of the college’s closure,” Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy said in a joint statement. “In the coming weeks and months, we will also work with the college’s staff to connect them to job opportunities with the city, county, and other local employers through job fairs and other events.”
