Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio, known for its liberal ethos and strong liberal arts curriculum, will close next year because of financial difficulties.

The announcement by the college that low enrollment and a small endowment meant “the College’s resources are inadequate to continue providing a quality education for its students beyond July 1, 2008,” prompted sadness among New York-based graduates of the college.

A college trustee, Janet Morgan, who is a management consultant in New York, said there is a renewal plan to “revamp” the college and reopen in 2012. The closure is nevertheless a stunning reversal for the college, which was founded in 1852. Horace Mann was the first president of the school, whose graduates include Coretta Scott King, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Stephen Jay Gould, and “Twilight Zone” host Rod Serling.

The school’s closing was tragic, said a former chairman of the Antioch board of trustees, Robert Krinsky, who is class of 1957.

The Antioch motto, “Be Ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” expresses the sense of duty to society that the college fosters, said a former trustee of the college, Frances Degen Horowitz. Indeed, the school has a history of campus activism culminating in the 1960s. The school later drew national attention for its step-by-step rules for consensual sexual activity (e.g., “body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans are not consent”).

A recent edition of the Insider’s Guide to Colleges, published by the Yale Daily News, quoted students describing Antioch’s dorms as “run down and shabby” and reported that “instead of grades, students receive narrative evaluations from teachers.” Antioch University’s tax return for its year ended June 30, 2005 showed investment assets of $35.5 million, smaller than many top private high schools.

Mr. Krinsky, who is a compensation and benefit consultant in New York, said when he was an undergraduate, the college was thought to be “way out there” for allowing women to be in the first floor common rooms until 1 a.m. on weekdays and 3 a.m. on Saturdays.

Ms. Horowitz, who is the former president of the CUNY Graduate Center, said the school transformed her life. She was a philosophy major whose teacher at Antioch, George Geiger, had been a student of pragmatist John Dewey. She said she learned from Geiger to think critically. Geiger also was the teacher at Antioch of the famous anthropologist, Clifford Geertz.

Ms. Horowitz said that Antioch combined two prongs: a superb liberal arts education with a pioneering off-campus work experience program called “co-op.” Students alternated between intensive studies and working in the world.

In her “co-op” job, Ms. Horowitz worked at a consumer dairy in Michigan, where she attended union meetings and learned to drive a truck.
The vice-chairman of the Antioch trustee board, Daniel Fallon, class of 1961, recalled his first co-op job selling toys at Macy’s during Christmas time in 1956. He earned a dollar an hour.

The director of research in the office of Mayor Bloomberg, Alan Gartner, did a “co-op” stint at the American Federation of Labor. He had not heard the school was closing and said he was stunned by the news.

A professor of law at New York University, Sylvia Law, class of 1964, said that during a “co-op” assignment, she taught a class of six-graders in New Hampshire about winter trees and worked as a “copyboy” at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She earned credit for co-op time spent in jail protesting a barber near the campus who would not cut black hair. She said she was sad about the school closing but not surprised since it had been struggling for some time.

Mr. Krinsky said the school overextended itself when it expanded to more than 30 campuses in the 1970s. “It was a huge financial drain,” said Ms. Horowitz, and the university “never had deep pockets.”

Antioch University, which presently has five other locations in Ohio, New Hampshire, California, and the state of Washington, will remain open. Students at the college will be able to try to complete their degrees at those campuses, or transfer to other institutions.

Noting that the school had closed twice before in its history, Ms. Horowitz predicted, “It’s going to rise again.”