This weekend classes will officially end at Coleman University. The school offered programs in cyber security and software development.
"We have been for 55 years a totally independent nonprofit," said Coleman University's President and CEO Norbert Kubilus. "We were for-profit in the beginning for 45 years."
Over it's 55-year history the school has amassed around 10,000 alumni.
"We are a teaching university that grants degrees in technical fields ... You can get an associates degree, you can get a bachelor's degree, you can get a masters degree here," Kubilus said.
However, after this weekend the university is shutting down and will no longer offer any classes. Over the last couple years Kubilus said enrollment dropped by 50 percent and the university began struggling financially.
"We continued to enroll students — we continued to operate," he said. "We depleted our reserves in order to do that."
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In an effort to boost enrollment, Coleman recently tried to get a regional accreditation — but were denied.
"We lost that opportunity," Kubilus said. "There were opportunities on the table that were just waiting for our regional accreditation."
With no accreditation, private donors started pulling out. Then, in late July, Coleman's board voted to close the university.
"Would I rather have had a decision earlier and had more time to do this? Yes," Kubilus said. "Would have I preferred to tell people what was happening earlier? I couldn't — because of the nature of the negotiations we were in to get additional funds. We may have stayed open."
Recently Coleman has been working to place it’s remaining 200 or so students into other schools. It hosted a resource fair with local colleges and provided free copies of transcripts for students.
"Very thankful for the support of the other schools in San Diego," Kubilus said. "To watch them come together the way they have to help take care of our students."
Although classes are ending, some staff will stay at Coleman for a couple of weeks to help close the university.
