The “financial burden” of a December 2021 cyberattack and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic forced 157-year-old Lincoln College in Illinois to cease operations on Friday, its president, David Gerlach, says.
The decision to terminate operations, which was decided in a vote by the board of trustees, has been sent to the Illinois Department of Higher Education and the Higher Learning Commission, Gerlach says.
the college took three months to recover from the cyberattack – reportedly a ransomware attack – which took down its systems and servers, a note on the college website says.
The cyberattack “thwarted admissions activities and hindered access to all institutional data, creating an unclear picture of fall 2022 enrollment projections.
