The investors who gave $2-million to the financially ailing nonprofit Myers University in May are now battling in court to keep the Cleveland institution from shutting down this month. The investors want to buy the university, though they say they plan to keep it as a nonprofit institution.

On Monday the president of Myers announced that the college, which has about 850 full- and part-time students, would close at the end of the semester because it could no longer pay its bills.

But hours later, in a scenario more typical of the hostile takeover battles seen in the corporate world, the investors went to court to block the president’s action.

According to today’s Plain Dealer, a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge will hold a hearing on the matter on Friday.

The investors are tied to a real-estate company affiliated with the University of Northern Virginia, a for-profit college with campuses in suburban Virginia as well as Cyprus, Hong Kong, London, and Prague.

In return for the money last May, Northern Virginia sought and received the right to appoint 15 trustees to the Myers board, a majority. According to The Plain Dealer, many of those board members were removed from the board last month over “conflicts of interest,” which the Northern Virginia officials said were never explained.

According to the newspaper, a majority of the 20 full-time faculty members support the sale as a way to save their jobs, and have signed a statement criticizing the university administration and declaring they can no longer support it. —Goldie Blumenstyk