The beleaguered New College of California is losing its accreditation and could be forced to close, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The experimental liberal-arts institution had been on probation since last summer, when its accreditor, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, issued a scathing report, faulting the college for numerous problems, and stated in a letter that it had a “culture of administrative sloppiness and arbitrariness.” The institution’s president of five years resigned in the wake of those actions.

The college’s Board of Trustees had disputed some of the Western Association’s criticisms last summer, but said it would comply with the agency’s accreditation standards. Those efforts apparently were not enough. According to the San Francisco newspaper, Ralph A. Wolff, president of the accrediting association’s senior-college division, wrote to college officials on Tuesday that his agency “could no longer validate to the public” that the institution had “a basic infrastructure of academic, operational, financial, and governance systems, structures, and policies.”

Without accreditation, the college will not qualify to receive federal student aid, a potential financial death blow. It has some options, “none of which are good,” one of its trustees, Tedd Corman, told the newspaper. Those include appealing the accreditor’s decision, applying for accreditation through another agency, or continuing as an unaccredited institution. But Mr. Corman seemed doubtful about pursuing those options. “I’m not sure it makes sense to continue,” he said. —Charles Huckabee