Briarcliff College

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This article is about the former women's college in Briarcliff Manor, New York. For the coeducational college on Long Island, New York, see Briarcliffe College. For the university in Sioux City, Iowa, see Briar Cliff University.

Briarcliff College was a women's college located in the village of Briarcliff Manor in Westchester County, New York, near White Plains.

Founded in the 1904, Briarcliff was a junior college until 1965, during the presidency of Charles E. Atkins, when it began awarding four-year Bachelor's degrees.^[1] By the time of its closing, it had about 300 students.

With the growing popularity of coeducation in the 1970s, Briarcliff found itself struggling to survive. The loss of then Briarcliff president, Josiah Bunting III, in spring 1977 to Hampden-Sydney College, a men's college in Virginia, contributed to the problems the college was having. Rather than continue to struggle, the college's trustees voted to sell the leafy suburban campus to Pace University, a New York City-based institution.

Rather than merge Briarcliff with Pace, the trustees attempted to reach a collaboration agreement with Bennett College, a junior women's college in nearby Millbrook which was also struggling with low enrollment. The plan did not work, however, and Briarcliff officially merged with Pace in 1977 after both Briarcliff and Bennett entered bankruptcy.^[2]