Students Respond to Philly's University of the Arts Closure

In a new article from WHYY, University of the Arts students are now responding to the school's closure, with many left scrambling to figure out their college plans.

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, University of the Arts in Philadephia will close on June 7th, following an abrupt announcement from the university on Friday, May 31st, citing a decline in enrollment and a long-standing cash flow problem. Students were not informed of the closure prior to the announcement.

According to University President Kelly Walk, the school is partnering with several institutions, including Drexel, Temple, and Moore College of Art & Design to ease the transition, but according to documents from The Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the university failed to disclose the closure in a timely manner or plan a full exit strategy.

“The negligence is shameful and the lack of communication is shameful. And I think that University of the Arts admin has let down and disappointed every single person who has interacted with the school by hiding this information from all of us, until someone else shared it. I truly think it’s abhorrent how they’ve approached this shutdown,” student Noah David Roberts told WHYY.

Daisy Fried, assistant adjunct professor of poetry and University of the Arts, states: “The students at the University Arts are most of the reason a lot of us teach there, because we don’t get paid very well,” Fried said. “But they’re interesting and they’re kooky and they’re problem solvers. And they came to University of the Arts with trust and aspiration and a lot of hard work and commitment. A lot of them go into debt for this. And then they find out that their institution doesn’t return that commitment and the work, and has also been dishonest with them.”

Incoming freshman and transfer students who have not started school yet have also been affected. “I’m a little frustrated, because now I have to figure something out for school,” transfer student Jennifer Cressman told WHYY. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now because all of the applications for other colleges have closed by now.”

Read the full story here.

The university board of trustees met Saturday morning to decide next steps, and issued a statement Sunday, which provided no further information on the transition.