Philadelphia’s University of the Arts Announces Sudden Closing

The nearly 150-year-old University of the Arts in Philadelphia will close its doors June 7. Many of its 1,149 students and about 700 faculty and staff members got the news from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday or on social media, only later getting official word from the school.

“The situation came to light very suddenly,” an announcement on its website said. It noted that “UArts has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues and increasing expenses.”

Enrollment is down from 2,038 in 2013. In an interview with the Inquirer, the institution’s president, Kerry Walk, said that revenue, including grants and gifts, failed to arrive in time to bolster the school’s finances. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which accredited the institution, indicated on Friday that it had revoked the University’s accreditation immediately, leaving no option for the school but to close. Town halls are planned on Monday.

“At 2:47 p.m. on Friday I got an email asking me to apply for graduation, and at 6:03 the Inquirer posted the story that my school was closing,” Natalie DeFruscio, an illustration major who first took classes there in the sixth grade and would have started her senior year in the fall, told The New York Times. “If you spent five minutes there, you could tell it was oozing with talented students. And there were amazing professors I adore who were also blindsided by this,” she said.

The closing was the result of a mix of cash flow constraints that are typical of schools like UArts, which depend on tuition dollars. In addition, UArts faced significant unanticipated costs, including major infrastructure repairs. The escalation of the costs significantly increased and could not be covered by revenue, according to a statement from the board of trustees on Sunday. “Despite our best efforts, we could not ultimately identify a viable path for the institution to remain open and in the service of its mission,” the statement said.

The email on Friday, from Walk, who had been in the position less than a year, and Judson Aaron, chair of the board of trustees, pledged to assist students in transferring to area institutions. The school did not make its leadership available for interviews.