In its uniquely counterculture way, Antioch College prepared Hope Anne Nathan for the world, as it did thousands more students across the generations.

That's why she still plans to make the trip from Polish Hill to Yellow Springs, Ohio, for her 15-year college reunion in two weeks, despite the news that the campus from which she graduated, the one-time bastion of liberal education and radical politics, is closing.

Elementary schools are one thing, but college closures are unusual. Yet this week, Antioch announced that it would shut its doors for at least four years starting in July 2008, giving trustees enough time to polish what has become a run-down campus and build the school's endowment, which as of last June stood at a relatively paltry $36 million.

The school, in a statement, said that it would be "suspending operations to design a 21st century campus."

By yesterday, news of the impending closure had spread through Pittsburgh's Antioch alumni community -- so, too, had the concern that Antioch's 21st century campus might not resemble the one that for years drew students from across the country, looking for a diverse student body and an atypical college experience.

Students didn't get letter grades, they got pass-fail marks and written evaluations from professors. There were no hall lectures; classes were held in roundtable discussions or lounges. Students did course work for half the year, then spent the other half flung across the country, or in some cases the world, doing "co-op" internships in fields related to their studies.

"I quite frankly worry about what it will come back as, if it comes back at all," Ms. Nathan said. "State-of-the-art? I wonder what that means." Her fear is that Antioch evolves into a University of Phoenix-style of school offering adult education and master's courses for off-campus students.

That seems plausible, she says, because Antioch University McGregor, Antioch's sister campus (less a campus and more a building across the street from the undergraduate college), just does that and seems to be among the most profitable of the satellites.

Antioch College is but one of six Antioch University campuses spread across Ohio and the country -- there are branches in California, Seattle and New Hampshire as well -- but even since the school's expansion years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Antioch College campus has been the ideological center of the university system.

"Aw, God, it's just heartbreaking," said 1998 Antioch grad Jamaica Jones, a Monroeville native now living in Brooklyn. "It's an institution that's been around since 1852, and it has a really unique history, for better or worse. It was a mini-culture in and of itself."

Its reputation for experimental educational models can be traced back to its founder, education activist and abolitionist Horace Mann. Its culture of political nonconformity is a more recent phenomenon, and may have achieved its apex in 1973, the year of the student strike that elevated the school into the national spotlight.

In April of that year, school President James Dixon and trustees were confronted by poor, inner-city students, known as the "New Direction" class, who worried that the school would renege on its promise to fully pay for their education. When Antioch officials couldn't satisfactorily guarantee financial support, the students rebelled.

They chained campus buildings and picketed at the entrances. Later came vandalism and firebombs. While the school wasn't fully closed, since some professors held classes off-campus, the student strike effectively shut down the campus for more than a month, causing an estimated $1 million in lost revenue. The number of applicants for the following school year was down by 50 percent, and enrollment, once at more than 2,000, has been dwindling since.

The school never recovered, physically or financially, from the spring of 1973, former students say.

"They damaged that campus badly," said Kirsten Ervin, a 1991 grad who now works for Blind & Vision Rehabilitation Services of Pittsburgh. She made a film about the chaotic springtime, called the "Spirit of '73," while she attended the school.

At the same time as the student strike, the school was trying to spread its cooperative vision across the country. "The college essentially spent the endowment on opening [new] campuses."

Recent and current students "romanticize that era ... they talk about reclaiming the spirit of 1973," Ms. Ervin said. "But not a lot of parents are going to want to spend that kind of money to send their kid to a school that is so free-form."

About the money -- tuition is about $28,000. When parents are spending that much, they expect a certain level of accommodation.

"I think a college like Antioch really needs to exist," said alumna Joni Rabinowitz, 65, co-director of a Pittsburgh anti-poverty group called Just Harvest. But, she said, "I got kind of disillusioned. Most of the attention was going to the university campuses."

Blame, it seems, is being spread widely. The trustees get their share for poor planning and a lack of reinvestment in the original campus. Steven Lawry, the new college president, has been accused of trying to stamp the hippie culture out of the school.

Many alums speculated that the very sort of student Antioch attracts -- the anti-establishment, anti-capitalist types -- don't exactly make for rich benefactors, one reason for the low endowment fund. And the school's experimental reputation, a source of pride for alumni, scares off future students with grad school on their minds.

Which is why Pittsburgh's closely knit group of graduates, most of whom know one another or at least have one another's e-mail addresses on file, aren't sure if the school can raise the funds for a face-lift, or should even try. They want the school to survive, but wonder if it really can.