Detroit's Marygrove College announced Wednesday that it will permanently close after the end of the 2019 fall semester. The college has operated in Detroit for 92 years.

"We hoped and prayed that this announcement would never have to be made," Sister Mary Jane Herb, president of the Immaculate Heart of Mary congregation that founded Marygrove College, said in a statement.

The closure of the now graduate-only college does not impact the P-20 educational campus that the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the University of Michigan, the Kresge Foundation and other partners are scheduled to open this fall.

Marygrove College shuttered its undergraduate program almost two years ago. With $25 million in debt, a $20 million operating budget and 491 undergraduate students, the college's finances weren't sustainable, Marygrove President Elizabeth Burns told the Free Press last year.

The college's financial struggles had not been well-publicized, and Marygrove students and alumnae reacted to the news of the undergraduate program closure with shock and dismay. Many questioned whether the college had truly explored all avenues; college officials say that debt continued to grow, and enrollment continued to decline.

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Burns, members of the IHM order and other Marygrove officials were hopeful that the college could continue as a graduate-only institution, attracting enough new students to keep a smaller-scale budget afloat. The college was able to restructure its debt with help from the Kresge Foundation, which had invested heavily in the area around Marygrove's west side campus. The 53-acre campus was deeded to the newly created Marygrove Conservancy, largely funded by Kresge and influenced by the values of the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who founded the college in Monroe in 1905.

But to become a successful graduate institution, Burns told the Free Press last year, enrollment would have to double or triple. Despite intensive marketing and recruitment, that hasn't happened. The graduate school has just 305 students.

“This is indeed an incredibly sad and heartbreaking day for everyone: Marygrove, higher education, our alumni, students, faculty, staff, our neighbors and the city of Detroit," said Burns, a Marygrove alumna who became president of the college in 2015.

Those students, as well as faculty and staff, were told Wednesday of the college's impending closure, the college said in a statement.

Burns says Marygrove has entered an agreement with Oakland University to accommodate students who are a year away from finishing their degrees, and will make similar arrangements with other schools as needed.

"All students will receive financial aid counseling and academic advising," Burns said, and the college is working to provide employment counseling to faculty and staff.

Founded by the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Marygrove opened in 1905 in Monroe, and moved to Detroit in 1927. The IHM order is strongly committed to social justice, equity and community building, and the college has educated generations of Detroit social workers, artists, teachers and musicians.

Marygrove College, on McNichols Road between Wyoming and Livernois avenues, is adjacent to areas of heavy neighborhood investment: The private, municipal and foundation investment in Detroit's Fitzgerald neighborhood, and the LiveSix area around Detroit's Livernois commercial corridor.

For the college to go dark, Kresge President and CEO Rip Rapson told the Free Press last year, was unthinkable. Investment in Marygrove, he said, was a chance to halt the kind of disinvestment and decline that has devastated other Detroit neighborhoods as anchor institutions have failed.

Kresge has committed $50 million to the P-20 campus. Its backers have said that the campus re-envisions both the way teachers are trained and the scope of education.

The plan, said Herb, honors the IHM commitment to equity and education.

Burns told the Free Press last year that none of the tough decisions about Marygrove's future have come easily.

"There’s been a lot of tears," she said. "In some ways I feel like my medical career has been preparing me for this job."

Nancy Kaffer is a Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com.