Back in the fall of 2024, incoming students were ready and eager to start their studies at Northland College. The Board of Trustees realized this would be their last academic year as Northland College closes this spring. Earlier this week the board were reviewing their financial projections, but soon discovered there wasn’t enough money in their budget.

Over the past few years Northland College has been through the ringer with budget issues, student retention and maintaining operation costs. The private university did announce they would close last year, but several fundraising efforts helped northland college continue for one more year. But, after going through financial projections, the board of trustees determined after the spring semester it would actually be time to shut down the school.

Some college students have already processed their grief with Northland College closing. Ryann Baker a freshman student says she’s trying to move forward with her education at Northern Michigan University.

“There’s nothing that you can really do. Life happens, stuff happens. You just have to move forward and just realize that it’s not over. This is just the beginning of something new. I’ll always carry a piece of Northland with me. It truly was a great experience for me. It’s just really unfortunate about the circumstances,” Baker said. “People don’t really know what to do. People feel lost and scared. There’s been a lot of anger. But I’m really hoping that we can reach a place of acceptance and just still hold the beauty of Northland with us, even though it’s not here anymore.”

College advisors are already hard at work meeting with students to help them transfer to other institutions. Although some students like Wyatt Verlin feel upset that the administration isn’t trying to keep the college going.

“If they were planning to shut down, I feel like those teach-out agreements could have been reached months ago or even weeks ago. But it’s just like, yesterday we had a meeting with the board president and he didn’t tell, they basically didn’t say anything of value. We might as well not have had the meeting.”

Back in 2024, Northland College had a goal to raise $12 million to continue their operations for several years. Ted Bristol the board of trustees chair says they made several aggressive budget cuts, but all the money raised had been spent.

“We raised a little more than one million dollars last year. We also had really significant contributions from some of the trustees on the board,” Bristol said. “Combined with the decisions to make some serious operating cuts budget cuts, put us in a position to open the doors again this past fall. So the money that was been raised has gone into the operating of the college.”

Students, faculty and the community of Ashland are still mourning the loss of Northland College. Bristol says the next steps in the coming months is to make sure the spirit of Northland College continues. One of the ways is by having students prepared to learn elsewhere.

“We’re talking about a relatively small number of students. We can actually get advisers to work individually with each student. We’re also working and we’ll be able to roll this out very soon.”

The teach out agreements Northland College are making help students transfer to different universities. They will also keep all their college credits and maintain their financial aid. For more details about how Northland College closes this year you can read more here.