Katherine Anderson made the trip from Texas to Philadelphia last year for a college program she couldn’t find anywhere else, combining music business, entrepreneurship and technology. Two weeks ago, he received the shocking news that the university would be closed within days.
The closure of the University of the Arts has left him and 1,300 other students scrambling to find somewhere to go or something to do.
By the time the school announced its closure, many colleges had already closed admissions due to the fall. Anderson was accepted into the music industry program at nearby Drexel University, which he said wasn’t ideal, but “the next best thing, I guess.”
“With everything going on, I felt very pressured to make a decision as soon as possible,” Anderson said. He is now suing the University of the Arts.
Many colleges across the country are closing as they face a sharp decline in enrollment, a result of changing demographics and the effects of the pandemic. The shutdowns in recent years have left tens of thousands of students in limbo — and at high risk of not completing their degrees at all.
Nationwide, private colleges were closing about twice a month, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
Before announcing that it would close, UArts, as it is often called, had trained musicians and artists, dancers and composers in Philadelphia for nearly 150 years. The school has been hit by a drop in enrollment and has said it has faced “large unexpected costs” that have forced it to close. Multiple state and local investigations are underway into how the university suddenly ran out of money.
“We still don’t have an answer to that question,” said Lynette Kuhn, chief executive of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, on Friday at an online information session for parents and students at the University of the Arts. Kuhn was answering one of several questions raised by frustrated students about what university officials knew about its sensitive finances — and what they were doing about it.
“We understand that you students … are dealing with impossible situations, with frustration beyond measure,” Heather Perfetti, president of the Interstate Commission on Higher Education, the accrediting agency, said at the same meeting. “We all believe that no educational journey should involve this kind of serious disruption and disruption.”
Drummer Adam Machado, 18, came to the University of the Arts from New York’s Hudson Valley to study many styles, including jazz and modern, in the big city. He had a $32,000 scholarship a year, and it’s unclear if other schools will match that. But he also wonders if he’ll find the same curriculum, sense of community and ability to pursue gigs in New York and Philadelphia, where he performed Wednesday night with a group called “Kids That Fly.”
He cries for “not only me, but also a thousand other artists (who do not) have a home.”
Like many of his classmates who went through the college search process last year, he’s not sure what to do next.
“You really don’t know where to start,” said student Cyrus Nasib, 18.
“It’s very stressful,” said Nasib, a theater manager who recently signed on for an apartment near a college campus, as his parents moved from the Philadelphia suburbs to the West Coast. “It just kills your motivation to do anything.”
Enrollment at the University of the Arts has nearly halved since 2009. Nationally, the number of college students in the US had been on a slow decline for years before the pandemic led to a significant drop in enrollment. Schools’ financial problems have been exacerbated by the mishandling of the new financial aid formula, which has sparked fears that hundreds of thousands of students will drop out of college altogether.
The University of the Arts has made arrangements with half a dozen colleges and universities to host UArts students and help them complete their degrees. Official agreements with a dozen other schools are being reviewed by the school’s accrediting agency.
But the disruption caused by college closures has a history of undermining student education.
Nationally, about half of the students whose campuses closed do not continue their studies, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, whose data examines both nonprofit and for-profit schools, including two-year colleges. Some students lose credits or have to spend more money to enroll elsewhere.
Democratic lawmakers held a hearing Monday on the closure of the University of the Arts, and the Philadelphia city council is planning its own hearing later this month.
“It throws up a lot of red flags,” said Councilman Mark Squilla. “How can the board realize the financial situation and say, ‘We just found out at the last minute that we couldn’t get the money.’ Were they already abused? Did they have a line of credit they could no longer borrow from? Are the banks closed? You know, all these questions, no one answers.”
Film major Ian Callaghan-Kenna, who took the bus to the University of the Arts, has been experiencing bouts of severe anxiety – not least because the college already has thousands of dollars in government aid in the fall. He joined a potential class action lawsuit against the school.
He said he was very saddened by how quickly it happened.
“The fact that they acted like everything was normal and that we were a thriving facility a few weeks ago, and now they’re already $40 million in the tank, they have to shut down,” he said, referring to another. rating deficit, “it’s just too annoying.”
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