Lon Morris College Plans Fall Classes

With apologies to Mark Twain, it appears that reports of the "death" of the venerable Lon Morris College in Jacksonville may have been a little premature.  LMC is not, with apologies to the poet Dylan Thomas, going gentle into that good night.

The Tyler Morning Telegraph reports only days after the school filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors, officials at Lon Morris College have announced it will offer the complete core curriculum in August, with what they describe as a "revitalized academic program that positions the school on a path towards its future."

This is the latest turn of events at Lon Morris, which is reorganizing and downsizing its administration, trimming and eliminating programs in its struggle to resolve a financial crisis that brought the oldest two year college in Texas to the brink of oblivion.

Lon Morris is in this fix because for years it spent wildly by expanding programs and adding new programs. It had to borrow extensively to pay for all that, and it reached the point where the school was so deep in debt it couldn’t pay its bills or even meet payrolls. The chickens, as they say, finally came home to roost.

This is a sad but all too common story of how living beyond your means always catches up to you, and your choices are:

1. Close the doors and fade away, or

2. Face the cold hard facts, cut costs, get back to basics and learn to live within your means.

Lon Morris officials, wisely, have chosen door number two.