Today's column was made possible by the grace of God and Keystone College.
Without the former, I would not have survived the sins of my past. Without the latter, I wouldn't be here making an appeal for the survival of the school that changed my life.
When I arrived at Keystone (then-Junior College) in 1995, I was 26 and desperate to correct my trajectory. I failed out of my first college at 19 and spent years working off the debt. I understood that Keystone was my last, best shot at getting an affordable, quality education and building a professional career.
Chris Kelly (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
I came to Keystone as an all-but-lost cause. I graduated with honors and the skills and self-confidence to become anything and belong anywhere. Thousands of Keystone grads say the same thing.
I got my foot in the door of this newspaper through an internship arranged by a beloved professor and former Times reporter. I met Chrissy when she was hired as an obituary clerk. We had our wedding reception in Evans Hall on Keystone's lush La Plume Twp. campus. After 20 years at The Times, she went to work at Keystone.
Like all of the college's remaining employees, Chrissy is committed to keeping Keystone alive. That goal was made much harder to reach last week when the Middle States Commission on Higher Education issued a letter that amounts to a death warrant.
Middle States threatened to terminate Keystone's accreditation Dec. 31 unless it appeals for a reversal. The college plans to appeal and will remain open and accredited until the appeal is decided, likely in March. Accreditation opens up federal and state financial aid for students. No school can survive without it.
And no school can survive without students. Under the conditions set by Middle States, Keystone can't recruit new students or market the college to potential students. Imagine the pitch: "Come to Keystone! We could close at any moment!"
To be clear, I don't fault Middle States for playing hardball. The college's finances were obviously mismanaged and likely criminally exploited. I'm confident an ongoing law enforcement investigation will sort out this sordid mess. We must have a full accounting of what went wrong and who is to blame. If crimes were committed, those responsible must be prosecuted.
That said, those people are no longer at Keystone, and the bad practices and procedures that allowed/encouraged the mess have been corrected. The college has provided Middle States with copious documentation to prove this, but the accreditor understandably has chronic doubts about the school's long-term financial viability.
Middle States isn't sold on a deal to merge Keystone with a subsidiary of the Washington Institute for Education and Research (WIER), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that supports schools. The deal fell apart in March, but was revived in August and is close to being finalized.
It's an unusual arrangement, but hardly revolutionary. Survival for small colleges and universities increasingly depends upon creative funding solutions. Clarks Summit University (the former Baptist Bible College) was fully accredited by Middle States when it closed in July.
When the WIER deal was announced in August, the Keystone community rejoiced. The college wasn't out of the woods yet, but its trajectory was corrected for the better. It was progress, a ray of light slicing through the grinding gloom. Middle States all but snuffed out that light when it put Keystone on death watch with a month left in the year.
The Clarks Summit University shutdown was a "planned closing," tightly managed by Middle States to ensure students were protected and able to find places at other schools. Middle States' threat to pull Keystone's accreditation on Dec. 31 (if the college opted not to appeal) would make a responsible, student-serving closure impossible.
"It's mind-boggling. It makes no sense," Keystone President John Pullo said Wednesday. "The thing Middle States is supposed to hate most is an unplanned closure, but that's what they're trying to impose on us."
Pullo has avoided press interviews on the subject, but shared my shock and frustration at the arbitrary, unnecessary and unconscionable timing of Middle States' "November Surprise." Keystone entered "show cause" status in April. Schools in that status are given up to 36 months to show why they shouldn't lose accreditation. Why the bum's rush?
I challenge Middle States to show cause for the timing of this decision. Why now? Who benefits from this 11th-hour suckerpunch? Certainly not students working to get an affordable, quality education and build a professional career. Nor does it help prospective students who are priced out of larger institutions.
"They're (Middle States) creating a circumstance that endangers a college that serves the most vulnerable student population," Pullo said.
It was a holiday week, so I wasn't able to reach anyone at Middle States for this column, which was made possible by the grace of God and Keystone College. I'll appeal to Middle States this week. In the meantime, Pullo said the college will continue to protect the interests of students no matter the outcome, but he is determined to secure the survival of the school that changed his life.
"It all started here for me, too," he said. "Keystone was the first place where someone paid attention to me and showed me that I could be something better than what I was."
Thousands of Keystone grads say the same thing.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, can never repay his debt to Keystone College. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.