HUNTSVILLE — As it prepares for its 150th anniversary, Alabama A&M University is considering purchasing Birmingham-Southern College, according to an official with Alabama A&M.
The university official said A&M is conducting its due diligence as it works on an offer for the soon-to-be-closed school.
Apparently, however, Alabama A&M isn’t the only one interested in Birmingham-Southern.
“Birmingham-Southern College is having conversations with several interested parties about the sale of the campus,” said Virginia Loftin, BSC vice president for advancement and communications.
Birmingham-Southern officials announced last month the college will cease operations May 31. The decision came after an 18-month effort to obtain bridge funding from a $30 million state loan program conceived and enacted to save the 168-year-old, nationally ranked liberal arts institution.
The B-SC Board of Trustees voted unanimously to close the college after a 2024 bill designed to amend the 2023 legislation that established the loan program failed to win sufficient support in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Birmingham-Southern College was founded in 1918 through the merger of two Methodist colleges: Southern University, chartered in 1856 in Greensboro; and Birmingham College, which opened in 1898.
Founded in 1875 by a former slave, Dr. William Hooper Councill, AAMU is a only a short distance from downtown Huntsville, the site of the school’s founding. Alabama A&M is the state’s largest Historically Black College and University and a traditional 1890 land-grant institution.
Alabama A&M, which has had a record enrollment while struggling to meet the demand for university housing for its students, said if it purchases Birmingham-Southern, the school would be an “independent campus under the AAMU umbrella.”
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