(Bloomberg) -- Eastern Nazarene College, a small Christian college about 10 miles south of Boston, is the latest to buckle under the pressures facing higher education in the US. 

The school’s board of trustees voted unanimously to begin the process of closing the school after years of “significant financial headwinds,” according to a statement released Tuesday. School administration aims to continue serving students on track to graduate by the end of the year, and has negotiated teach-out agreements with three schools: Gordon College, Mount Vernon Nazarene University and Trevecca Nazarene University. 

“Our top priority in the coming weeks is caring for those most directly affected by this decision: our students, faculty and staff,” David Bowser, chair of the board of trustees, said in the statement. 

The college, located in Quincy, Massachusetts, has seen its enrollment decline steadily over the last decade. It enrolled a total of 535 students in 2022, about a third of its total in 2012, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The closing highlights the brutal landscape for small colleges grappling with enrollment declines and rising costs. Those challenges can be particularly acute for religious colleges, who confront the same issues secular schools do, while struggling to appeal to a declining number of young people who say organized faith is a part of their lives. 

Earlier this month, Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, a private college that trains future animators and dancers with roughly $50 million of municipal debt outstanding, abruptly closed after its finances deteriorated. And last month, a small private college on Manhattan’s Upper East Side agreed to merge with Northeastern University, also citing financial woes.

--With assistance from Brooke Sutherland.

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