Weeks after Dowling’s spring 2016 semester, students discovered via email that the school would close. Social-event schedules for the fall semester still hang on bulletin boards around the Oakdale campus.

"The buildings were falling apart, teachers were being laid off, but I never thought they would just shut the doors with no warning," said Justin Carlson, who had just completed his junior year.

Dowling’s property and other assets could be worth half a billion dollars, well over the $66 million that creditors like Carlson and bond holders have claimed, according to court documents. Anything in excess of those claims will make the trip with the endowment to the attorney general office, Rosenfeld said.

Often, there are no scraps left to fight over. An intact endowment for a failed institution is rare, said Art Rebrovick, restructuring officer for Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, which closed in 2014.

“The endowment was on the books for $4 million, but it had been leveraged and used for faculty salaries so many times that there was just literally no money there,” Rebrovick said.

College Try

Sweet Briar College, a leafy oasis of Virginia gentility, attempted a different approach. The women’s college announced in March 2015 it would close after years of budget problems and its $85 million endowment would facilitate a smooth transition for students and faculty.

Instead, graduates rallied to keep the school open. This year’s freshman class was 75 women short of its 200 student goal, according to news reports in May, although the total number of new students ultimately reached 174. An alumnae group called Saving Sweet Briar, along with student and parent representatives, faculty and former administration and board members worked with the Virginia attorney general’s office to free $16 million of endowment funds for operations.

“It’s a nice story that they kept the school open, but the sad truth is that they’re most likely just delaying their fate, and making it an uglier closure than it had to be,” Rebrovick said.

Tim Klocko, Sweet Briar College’s vice president for finance and treasurer, said the school ended the last fiscal year “more healthy than anybody would have imagined -- spending $2 million below projections in an already reduced budget and realizing an operating surplus.”