Holy Names University, a 154-year-old Catholic institution in Oakland, California, that serves a large number of first-generation and low-income students, will shut down when its spring semester ends in May because of rising costs and falling enrollment, it announced Monday. Leaders decided in November 2021 that their best option for the future was finding a merger partner. But after a year’s work and a national search, they didn’t find a taker for the institution, which is saddled with tens of millions of dollars in debt and hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of deferred maintenance.
