15. Briarcliff College (Long Island)
Briarcliffe College was a private for-profit college on Long Island with campuses in Bethpage and Patchogue. The college was founded in 1966 in Hicksville as a one-year business school, Another campus opened in Mineola in 1969 before moving to Lynbrook 14 years later. In 1979, Briarcliff was eligible to offer two-year associate degrees in occupational studies. Briarcliff was predominantly female, though the school became fully coeducational after purchasing the predominantly male Grumman Data Systems Institute, which was located in Woodbury.
In 1994, the college purchased a quarter-million square foot facility in Bethpage, which attracted students from the Lynbrook and Woodbury campuses. Briarcliff College was only allowed to call itself “College” in 1996, after which it granted four-year degrees. The college suffered financial challenges in the early 2010s after over-inflating job placement rates, and it officially closed in 2018.