Over the past week, faculty, staff, and students at the 150-year-old University of the Arts have been scrambling to make sense of the Philadelphia institution’s imminent closure.
At the heart of the university’s troubles appears to be the same issues that have plagued numerous other small, private institutions: too few students and rising expenses. The bottom line, one campus-finance expert told The Chronicle, is that the university ran out of cash to pay its short-term expenses.
But University of the Arts leaders have done little to clarify why they took such an extreme measure with just seven days’ notice, announcing a closing date of June 7. A meeting planned for Monday afternoon to answer questions was canceled just minutes before it was scheduled to begin. Efforts to get more information from the board or campus leadership have been met with silence, several faculty members said, and the president, Kerry Walk, resigned on Tuesday without explanation.
Walk did not respond to several requests for comment. Several other university officials contacted by The Chronicle also did not respond.
University leaders also failed to give proper notice to the institution’s accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which immediately revoked its accreditation because the institution had not submitted a proper “teach-out” plan, to ensure that students would be able to complete their programs at other colleges.
The commission “does and can help institutions close well and with integrity; however, we cannot do it with a day’s or week’s notice,” the accreditor’s president, Heather F. Perfetti, said in a news release on Wednesday. “It is critical that institutions and any attorneys and consultants working with them understand the expectations of this Commission. This is terribly frustrating for everyone involved but especially our students.”
As of Wednesday, the only new information the university provided since news of the closure was to announce that it had hired a consulting firm, Alvarez & Marsal, to “help us urgently address the needs of our students, faculty, and staff as we work through this process.”
The lack of information, along with the suddenness of the closure, has led to student protests, a threat of legal action from the faculty as well as possible government scrutiny.
“Rest assured, we will be demanding an independent investigation into the events that led to this shocking and sudden decision,” State Rep. Ben Waxman, a Democrat whose district includes the university, wrote to an alumnus in an email shared with The Chronicle.
“Know that we are working to find as much information as possible about the situation,” Waxman wrote, “and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to hold those responsible for this accountable.”
Meanwhile, nearby Temple University is considering buying the institution and keeping the doors open.
“We are committed to continuing conversations with UArts representatives to explore all options and possible solutions to preserve the arts and the rich legacy of this 150-year-old institution,” Temple officials said in a statement on Wednesday.
No ‘Imminent Danger of Closing’
Last Friday, Michael Attie, film program director at the University of the Arts, had been working on revising the curriculum for the coming fall and talking with some incoming students when he got a call from the dean to check his computer.
There he found a link to news of the university’s announcement — not from the institution, but from an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer. University officials later released an open letter to the campus.
“We know that the news of UArts’ closure comes as a shock,” the university officials wrote. “Like you, we are struggling to make sense of the present moment. But like many institutions of higher learning, UArts has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues, and increasing expenses.”
What was confounding for faculty is that the enrollment picture at the university looked brighter for the fall of 2024 than it had in years, according to documents shared with The Chronicle.
In 2019, the total enrollment at the university, including graduate students, was 2,037, according to federal data. By 2023, that number had dropped to 1,313 — a decline of 35 percent. But more than 400 students had already made deposits for the coming academic year, according to university figures. That suggested the institution would have a significantly larger entering class than this past fall, when 182 first-time, full-time freshmen enrolled.
Faculty understood there had been financial troubles, but no one was told how bad things really were, said Carolina Blatt, director of the program in art and design education. “We were asked to be judicious about our spending in response to financial concerns,” Blatt wrote in an email.
“However, spending cuts are widespread in the current higher ed landscape, so it didn’t appear to be a hair-on-fire situation,” Blatt continued. “There were certainly no indicators that the university was in imminent danger of closing.”
But for Julee Gard, vice president for administration and finance at the University of St. Francis, in Illinois, it wasn’t a big surprise that the university is shutting down.
Gard examined the university’s audited financial statements back to 2015. She found a host of problems that contributed to the institution’s demise, including a limited amount of unrestricted endowment dollars it could use as a rainy-day fund, and inadequate amounts of tuition and auxiliary revenue to cover regular operating expenses — a measure she calls “student revenue coverage.”
On Gard’s own financial viability score, a scale of 1 to 100, the University of the Arts got just 38 in fiscal year 2022, and 28 for fiscal year 2023.
Meanwhile, several other area colleges have offered admission and financial aid to students at University of the Arts, including Temple, Drexel University, Montclair State University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, which has also faced falling enrollment and program cuts.
Owen Krewson, who is finishing his freshman year studying vocal music with a minor in music education, said students will move on if necessary. But it will be hard to replace the special culture at the university. Some of his friends, Krewson said, “don’t want to find anywhere else because it’s special and can’t be replaced.”
“We all feel a sense of frustration and anger,” said Krewson. “It’s natural to feel this way when you’ve been put out like this.”
