One of the reasons Bernie Sanders is doing well with Millennials is because he’s promising free college for everyone.
In an ultimate twist of irony, his wife Jane Sanders was president of Burlington College in Vermont and racked up such large debts for the small school that she led it to ruin.
Burlington College announced today it will close after it was unable to recover from the crushing debt incurred under during Jane Sanders’ tenure as president of the institution.
Heat Street reported:
Burlington College announced today that it will close on May 27 after it found itself unable to recover from “the crushing weight of the debt” incurred under Jane O’Meara Sanders, the college’s former president and wife of Bernie Sanders.
At the end of 2010, Ms. Sanders took out $10 million in loans on behalf of Burlington College to purchase a 32-acre swathe of land from the Roman Catholic diocese, which put the land up for sale to help cover the costs of a $17 million sexual-abuse settlement.
As Heat Street reported last month, the college almost immediately fell short on its financial obligations as fundraising pledges and commitments Ms. Sanders cited in the loan agreements never materialized.
Less than a year after leading Burlington College into massive debt, Ms. Sanders resigned, taking with her a $200,000 severance package. By 2014, because of its shaky finances and running deficits, Burlington College found itself placed on probation for two years by the regional accreditation agency.
A Burlington College news release issued this morning called these financial hurdles “insurmountable at this time.”
“We anticipate notice from [the regional accreditation agency] that we have not met the Commission’s financial standard,” the news release said, “and, therefore, our accreditation will be lifted as of January 2017, and the College will not be able to award academic credit after this time.”
