Posted on 06/04/2016 12:46:04 PM PDT by marshmallow
St. Catharine College in Kentucky is closing its doors after a protracted fight with the U.S. Department of Education left the small Roman Catholic school in a financial hole.
Three months ago, St. Catharine filed a lawsuit against the department for withholding more than $1 million in federal loans and grants as a condition of heightened cash monitoring, a form of federal oversight the school was subjected to for more than a year. Although government officials said their decision was made in error and promised to reimburse some of the money, the damage proved too much for the school to overcome.
John Turner, chairman of St. Catharine’s board of trustees, blames the federal sanctions for the trouble the school has had attracting students. Whereas the small private college touted 600 full-time students prior the the problems with the government, there are now fewer than 475 enrolled for the fall, according to the school. Turner said the decline in enrollment has been difficult to handle with the school’s obligation to repay debt used to finance the construction of a new residence hall, health-science building and library.
“The challenges facing St. Catharine College are insurmountable,” Turner said, in a note to the campus community Wednesday. “Without the enrollment and with [Education’s] chokehold on our cash flow, the debt is simply not manageable.”
In a scramble to keep the doors open, college administrators and trustees have explored creating an alliance or merging with other institutions in recent weeks. St. Catharine president Cindy Gnadinger held meetings with several college leaders, but the discussions were unsuccessful. As a result, the board voted Tuesday night to close at the end of July.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Very sad. And obviously deliberate. Maybe Obama will re-open it as a Muslim college, fully funded by tax dollars.
My buddy made the right choice last year by NOT taking a position there.
Part of this obviously was the unwise investments in expansion of facilities. There has been a downturn in enrollments, finally, and they were caught by that. The Fed problems seem to have been just the last straw.
Fortunately perhaps for the students it hasnt much of a reputation so there is little lost through a transfer to a state college or similar level private college.
“Although government officials said their decision was made in error and promised to reimburse SOME of the money,”
Curious to know if barky has done likewise to other small Catholic Colleges.
"Three months ago, St. Catharine filed a lawsuit against the department for withholding more than $1 million in federal [emphasis added] loans and grants as a condition of heightened cash monitoring ..."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
As mentioned in related threads, the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes.
In fact, a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified in broad terms that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, taxing and spending for intrastate schools in this example not among those powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So the funding that the corrupt feds withheld from the referenced school is arguably local and state revenues that the corrupt feds had stolen from the state by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.
Remember in November !
When patriots elect Trump, they also need to elect a brand new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its Section 8-limited powers to support Trump’s vision for making America great again, but also put a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes and federal interference in state affairs.
St. Catherine College shouldn’t be closing its doors because of an unconstitutional middleman.
Note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
No enrollment? Welcomd to the end of the big education bubble. 0bama’s fault....
Sounds like someone needed to be monitoring their cash following a spending spree.
If you take taxpayer money, you should expect to be held accountable for your spending.
Federal monies always has strings attached. It’s like borrowing from the mob.
Truly sad. But remember that the truth is always victorious.
Right, while Detroit Michigan schools have to be bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of 715 million dollars due to fraud, bribes, ghost employee salaries, mis-spending funds, etc.
Their are 3 problems here: Title 9, Title 9, and Title 9. The sooner small faith based or conservatively centric Colleges divorce themselves from this boat anchor the better....
There has to be more to this story than meets the eye.
When I was in college, I got several work-study grants.
No staff member wanted to actually hire me, so I couldn’t claim the money.
I tried complaining to my congressman’s office and the Dept of Education, but all I got told was that the school just had to consider hiring me. Neither one had any idea how many students on work-study actually got hired.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.