Victory University — A Bible College Sold to a For-Profit, Then Closed in a Single Spring

Summary

Victory University, in Memphis, Tennessee, traced its origins to 1941 and closed in May 2014, seventy-three years later, after a single announcement in early March that the spring semester then underway would be its last. The school that closed was the third name worn by the same institution: it began as a Bible study class, became Mid-South Bible College, spent a quarter-century as Crichton College, and ended as Victory University — the name it took in 2010 after a California company bought the financially troubled Christian college in 2009 and converted it into a for-profit business. By March 2014 roughly 1,600 students were enrolled. They were given a few weeks' notice that the institution would not exist by summer.

The cause was the plainest in higher education: not enough students, and not enough money. Victory had pushed enrollment toward a peak of about 1,970 by expanding online classes and adding athletics, but the for-profit model its new owner had layered onto a small Christian college never found stable footing. The financial troubles that had prompted the 2009 sale never resolved; they followed the school under its new name and new owner, and in March 2014 the owner, Significant Education, simply decided the spring term would be the end. There was no slow accreditation battle and no fraud case — just the quiet arithmetic of a small religious college that could not enroll its way to solvency, now run by a company that could choose to stop.

The closure stranded students mid-degree, but Memphis-area institutions stepped in. Union University — a fellow Christian school — held an information session within weeks and committed to building transfer plans that would honor as much of the Victory coursework as possible, with more than fifty students expressing interest in transferring to Union's campuses in Germantown, Jackson, and Hendersonville. The abruptness still hurt: athletic teams folded mid-season, with a baseball squad playing on while its coach went unpaid and the program fundraised to finish.

A note on the file: this dossier sits in the Sacred Ground family for the institution's Christian heritage, but at closing Victory University was, in legal fact, a for-profit corporation owned by Significant Education — a distinction that matters, because the decision to close was a corporate one, made by an owner that had bought the college's mission as a business and could write it off as one.

Timeline

From an Evening Bible Class to Crichton College

The institution that died as Victory University was born in 1941 as an act of ministry. The Reverend Thomas McKinney, fresh from Dallas Theological Seminary, started an evening Bible study class in Memphis; three years later, on October 13, 1944, it was chartered as the Mid-South Bible Center, a school to train ministers and lay leaders in biblical principles. Like many Bible institutes of its era, it grew in stages: a non-credit adult program and a one-year Bible course gave way to a four-year program in 1958, and in 1960 the school became Mid-South Bible College, a degree-granting Christian institution.

Its longest and most stable identity came in 1987, when the college was renamed Crichton College in honor of James B. Crichton, the longtime president who had died in 1984. For more than two decades as Crichton, it was a small, nondenominational Christian liberal-arts college in Memphis — modest in size, rooted in its faith mission, the kind of school that endures quietly for generations on a combination of tuition, donors, and conviction. That was the institution's golden age, such as it was: not a period of great scale, but a long stretch of steady purpose under a name that meant something to the people of Memphis. What it never built, in seventy years, was the financial depth to survive a downturn on its own — and that absence is what made it, by 2009, a financially troubled college available for purchase.

The For-Profit Turn

The decisive break came in 2009, when Crichton College — by then struggling financially — was bought by Significant Education, a California-based company sometimes referenced as Significant Federation, and converted from a nonprofit Christian college into a for-profit business. A new president, Dr. John M. Borek Jr., was installed, and in 2010 the institution was rechristened Victory University. The thesis behind the purchase was the one that drove much of the for-profit higher-education boom of that era: that a struggling traditional college, with its accreditation and its name, could be turned into a growth business by adding online programs and aggressive recruitment. Victory duly expanded its online offerings and added intercollegiate athletics, and enrollment climbed toward a peak of about 1,970 students.

But the growth did not translate into stability. The financial troubles that had made Crichton a takeover target in 2009 did not vanish under new ownership; they persisted under the new name, and by the early 2010s enrollment had slipped back toward 1,600. A for-profit owner approaches a money-losing campus differently than a church or a board of trustees does: where a denomination might subsidize a mission and a nonprofit board might fight to the last to keep the doors open, a corporate owner weighs the asset against the loss and can decide, coldly and quickly, to stop. That is what happened. Whatever the online classes and the athletic teams had added in headcount, they had not added solvency, and the owner concluded the experiment was over.

The Five Factors

Aftermath

The students scattered, but not without help. Union University's transfer commitment gave many of Victory's roughly 1,600 students a clear destination and a promise that their completed coursework would be honored as fully as possible, and more than fifty took up that offer at Union's regional campuses. Other students assembled their own transfers to Memphis-area institutions. As with any mid-degree closure, the cost was measured in lost time, lost credits, and the disruption of starting over, but the presence of a willing nearby partner meant fewer students were left with nothing.

Faculty, staff, and coaches lost their jobs, and the athletic programs ended outright. The closure left behind the Memphis campus and a seventy-three-year institutional lineage that had survived under three names and two ownership models before a for-profit owner closed the books. Victory University became a small entry in the larger story of the for-profit higher-education boom and bust — a struggling Christian college bought as a turnaround play, expanded with online courses and sports, and shut down a few years later when the play did not pay off. The lesson its file leaves is quiet but pointed: a name and an accreditation can be bought, but the financial weakness that put the school up for sale comes bundled with them, and a new owner who cannot fix it can always choose, instead, to close.

Lessons

References

• Victory University Wikipedia
• Victory U., a For-Profit, Shuts Down Inside Higher Ed
• Defeat For Victory University; Doors Closing WREG
• Victory University in Memphis closes; Union extends welcome Cardinal & Cream