4 Once-Thriving Colleges And Universities That Now Lay Abandoned

For many, a college campus is a lively place of movement. You move from class to class, to your friends, to a party, and to the next phase of your life. It's unsettling to think of a university as abandoned, since it's a denial of that movement and its very essence. While the United States has some of the world's best universities and scenic college towns among its nearly 6,000 higher education facilities, the country is also filled with closed, defunct, and abandoned schools.

There are a number of reasons why a college closes: financial difficulties, loss of accreditation (preventing the enrollment of new students), and a decline in enrollment overall. And, of course, none of these factors were helped by the COVID-19 pandemic. There's also the issue of the "demographic cliff" reached in 2025. Less people have been having kids since the 2007 recession, and as of 2025, there will be fewer college-aged students than in earlier decades. Add to that higher costs of housing and food, a declining belief in the value of a college degree, and government initiatives discouraging international students from attending U.S. schools, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

When schools close, they may merge with other colleges to stay open under a different banner. Some are completely demolished to make way for something new. Others are left abandoned, their deteriorating campuses stuck in limbo. The locations on this list are all historic and deserted, though a few have been bought. They may not have had the enrollment numbers of bigger institutions, but still, they once thrived as social and economic hubs of their communities.

An hour outside of the breathtaking parks and nature of Boston stand the empty buildings of a college founded by the Seventh Day Adventist Church in 1882. One of the country's oldest Seventh Day Adventist colleges and home to the first building constructed by the church, Atlantic Union offered bachelor's degrees in theology/religion and health science/biology, as well as certification programs for students to pursue occupations as bookkeepers, pharmacy technicians, and medical office assistants.

At its peak, Atlantic Union had about 700 students. These students were lively members of the town and often seen working in the print and broom shop or milking cows on the school's 35-acre dairy farm. By the time the college closed in 2018, there were only 50 people enrolled. Financial struggles and a loss of accreditation in 2011 led to this historic school shutting down, and the impact has been felt across the community.

While the residential parts of the campus sold in 2021, initial plans to repurpose the site as a new educational facility fell through. Atlantic Union now faces the issue most closed colleges do: How can you repurpose university-specific facilities like gyms, libraries, and dorms? Plus, in this case, both the town and church members have to agree on what's done with the campus. So, about 15 buildings remain unsold and untouched, boarded up with broken windows and color-coded books gathering dust inside. The campus has transformed into a ghost town that Lancaster residents mourn. According to a 2024 MassLive report, potential buyers have expressed interest in the property. However, as of February 2026, nothing has been decided.

A historic Black college once brought life to the small town of Lawrenceville in southern Virginia, but since 2013, its buildings have stood empty. James Solomon Russell, a formerly enslaved man who became an educator and Episcopal minister, founded Saint Paul's College in 1888. The school initially focused on training African-Americans to work in educational, agricultural, or industrial jobs. During its 125-year tenure, it evolved into a liberal arts school and by 1941 it started offering bachelor's degrees. Saint Paul's also hosted adult-learning courses and special programs for teen parents.

Serving low-income and first generation college students in a rural community where many faced poverty or limited options, the campus was a a symbol of hope. Sadly, financial instability, loss of accreditation, and a lack of professors with terminal degrees ultimately led to its closure. Subsequently, this caused most of Lawrenceville's businesses to shut down. In 2017, Chinese investor Sui Liu bought the property for $2.5 million. Strangely enough, Liu also bought New Hampshire's closed Daniel Webster College that same year. It, too, has been left to ruin.

Apparently, there were plans to turn Saint Paul's into an educational facility again, but the grounds currently remain more or less abandoned. However, in 2024, local authorities dismantled the property's science lab, since chemicals had been left there for years. Today, the college's century-old brick buildings (like the chapel built by students in 1910) are now covered with vines. Determined not to let this historic campus waste away, nonprofit SPC4Life is working with Virginia Tech and other schools to bring it back to life.

Founded in 1842 (four years before Iowa even became a state), Iowa Wesleyan University was a liberal arts college that operated for 181 years and closed in 2023. Less than an hour from the Midwest's one and only "UNESCO-Designated City Of Literature," this school began as the Mt. Pleasant Collegiate Institute before being adopted by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1850. Eventually, it became the state's first co-ed educational institution. The campus offered faith-inspired teaching that integrated service-learning into the curriculum, meaning students participated in community service.

Ranked a top-tier regional college in 2015, Iowa Wesleyan offered bachelor's degrees in subjects like business administration and management, criminal justice, and physical education. But, by 2023, the student population had shrunk so much that the school offered discounts to bring in more people. This only deepened the university's financial troubles, though, as it already owed $26 million to the USDA. In the end, the school announced its closure just two months before shutting down. Students, faculty, and the town were left in shock. Some of the historic buildings on campus were demolished, while major items were auctioned off.

The former university's town of Mount Pleasant was founded in 1842, the same year as the school, and the two were intricately intertwined. Iowa Wesleyan's closure has been a blow to community members, some of whom even tried to save pieces of the school's gym floor. Per a 2024 Iowa Public Radio article, the campus has now been divided up, and its largest portion was sold to the school district. A different buyer plans to turn some of the buildings into residences, while another will make office spaces. Currently, the historic campus remains somewhere between demolished and abandoned, waiting for its new life.

When the Baptist minister Reverend J.R. Harrison founded Virginia Intermont College (originally the Southwest Virginia Institute) in 1884, his mission was to educate women of the region. And for almost 100 years, Virginia Intermont College (or VI) did just that. The school went co-ed in 1972, and had over 1,100 students at its peak in 2004. For 130 years, it was an integral part of the community of Bristol, the historic district known as "two states in one" that's bisected by the Tennessee state line. But financial difficulties and a drop in enrollment led to the loss of its accreditation in 2013. It was an especially harsh blow for VI, which was the first two-year college in the country to get accreditation back in 1910.

VI closed in 2014 and in 2016, it was sold in an auction to U.S. Magis International, a Chinese-owned company, which planned to open a business college in 2020. That plan fell through with COVID-19 and since then, the campus has been left abandoned, its historic buildings boarded up, broken into, and vandalized. The city tried to get the owner to maintain the property and fix the buildings, which have been labeled as derelict and blighted, but the owner disappeared. 

A massive fire destroyed many of the historic structures and with no response from the owner, Bristol was left to clean up the mess. After the owner fell behind on property taxes, Bristol nearly took control of the campus to sell it to someone else, but U.S. Magis International resurfaced to pay $605,000 in taxes to retain ownership of the school. With many of its buildings demolished and others sectioned off with asbestos, VI's future looks bleak, as it seems like the campus will just be left to die.

Crafting this roundup of four once-thriving colleges and universities that now lay abandoned began with general research about colleges that have closed. Sources such as Lost Colleges and Prep Scholar provided lists of defunct and closed schools, and this collection of candidates was narrowed down based on a few criteria.

First, the campuses had to be both deserted and still standing. Given the difficulty of selling buildings with such specialized functions, a lot of closed schools see their structures demolished to allow construction and development on top of them. These properties were not included here. Second, each college had to have formerly been flourishing as a local hub in some way. All the campuses featured here were once major economic, social, and cultural lifelines for their communities. Additionally, since the U.S. is filled with historic college towns (like this one outside of Philadelphia), campuses built either in the 1800s or early 1900s were prioritized. These spots not only feature fascinating works of architecture but are also emblematic of the strange journey from lively institution to vacant relic.

After refining the list of options based on the above criteria, each school's history was researched using local news outlets. Curious to explore other abandoned places? Check out these five ghost towns you can visit along Route 66.