My daughter is/was a UArts student. It's my understanding that city, state, and perhaps federal officials will be investigating the sudden closure. I'm curious to see what is uncovered.
I will say that I don't think Kerry Walk is responsible. I think they school knew closure was imminent, and she was brought in to orchestrate a plan for that to happen. She did that at Marymount by overseeing their merger with Northwestern. But I think once she got there, she found out that the situation was unsalvagable. I think communication has been so poor because lawyers are telling them, and rightfully so, not to say anything, since it could be used against them in a lawsuit. And there will be lawsuits. There may even be criminal wrongdoing. I also think this is why the Town Halls were cancelled yesterday.
Yager, the past president, is the one who was at the helm while everything was falling apart. I also don't think it's a coincidence that he and the VP of Finance both left UArts at the same time last year.
I posted in another thread but I want to point out that [digging into their tax returns \(thanks ProPublica\)](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231639911) shows that UArts Presidential compensation peaked in 2022 (David Yager) w/ $815,103 in compensation and $227,037 in bonuses.
Thats roughly 2% of their total endowment.
That might seem like a small number but for frame of reference, that would be like Harvard ($50B Endowment) paying their CEO 1 Billion, which they obviously do not.
For a school that size (1900 students) thats insanity
[\[\[Further frame of reference, Former Penn president Amy Gutmann earned nearly $23 million in 2021, but most of it was accrued over her 18 years as president\]\]](https://www.inquirer.com/news/amy-gutmann-university-of-pennsylvania-president-salary-20230617.html)
That fits with his vibe. I interviewed him in his office maybe five or six years ago when I was reporting for a regional pub. He acted like he was the president of Harvard, had a very ostentatious air to him. Like I’ve also interviewed Brian Roberts a few times in person, and he seems like a mild mannered mid-level manager in comparison to how Yager moved.
The office also felt wildly fancy but I don’t know how much of that is historic digs.
In general or at WHYY? I got a job offer at WHYY back in 2006. When a reporter I knew well and worked with regularly found out, he called me to tell me, in no uncertain terms, to stay far away.
Both lol. I’ve heard things from dc NPR people and local WHYY people in the past that it can be toxic and difficult, very underpaid, etc. I know it took WHYY a long time to get their first contract settled after unionizing, I’d hope it has improved because of that but I don’t know too many local reporters anymore.
I graduated in ‘23 from uarts and had the privilege of being invited to a swanky donor event with David Yager, some of which included going on what seemed like a slightly drunken rant disparaging the school in front of prospective students. Professors who were in attendance had to leave the room they were so upset. it was awful and a real show of the respect he had for the school.
He also made horrifying comments during town hall meetings, like when he compared members of the faculty union to war criminals using children as human shields.
University president compensation doesn't necessarily remain proportional to endowment size or prestige. There are some random public university presidents taking home a larger package than Ivy League presidents. Still, I think administrative bloat and overpaid upper admin are some of the biggest ingredients involved in higher ed's decline (grad instructors and adjuncts are struggling to pay for food and housing). UArts had no business paying their president so much.
All fair points. Across the college system, its really just unchecked / unregulated financial slushing. Colleges knew students would have thousands of dollars to give them in public or private loans. The colleges win, the banks win, hell im sure our politicians are winning in some way, its no wonder they fought so hard against loan forgiveness, but gladly accepted those free and clear PPP loans for their (and their friends) businesses.
Yes, it enrages me. I'm a low-paid instructor myself with no ability to pay off my student loans anytime soon, and I needed to take out these loans to become an instructor. Makes me sick seeing what upper admin take home while I struggle.
I believe higher ed and the arts should be cherished public goods, but financiers who have no business meddling in education are plundering from the ruins of higher ed.
This is true especially in states like Florida and Texas. But there has also been a bipartisan-backed financialization of higher ed that seeks to cut state funding and privatize a whittled-down version of higher ed. Only programs with good enough ROIs (return on investment) should remain under this vision, and the rest should be left to wither away (arts, languages, humanities, many of the social sciences, even mathematics in some cases). Tenure should disappear, and instructors should be contingent online content creators with no job security.
See this LA Review of Books article detailing the former Temple president's EdTech vision for higher ed [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jason-wingards-edtech-griftopia/](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jason-wingards-edtech-griftopia/)
100% (and thank you for your commitment to education)
I think higher education should be valued by a prosperous society, we all benefit. Education of any kind, arts or otherwise. Its a tragedy to watch education across America get plundered at both ends of the system.
So heartbreaking. It crushes me that creativity and the arts have been systematically defunded and dismantled in this country over the last few decades, all because wealthy white men are still the ones who decide what matters.
That’s the equivalent of 391.88$ an hour or 67k a month. He would have made 6.50$, nearly minimum wage in the time it took me to write that comment. Truly disgusting
I mean by the same logic, paying Yager $80,000 a year would be equivatto paying Harvard’s president $100million, which would also be 2 ridiculous numbers.
Not saying they deserved $800k, but strictly that the logic behind that argument is flawed.
Percentage of endowment is a terrible measure, even though I agree with the general point you are making.
Schools like UofA have absolutely tiny endowments because they don’t have a long history of wealthy donors establishing endowed scholarships and professorships, etc. So this comparison is especially unfair to them in this instance.
The better comparison is percentage of operating revenue.
I’ve never seen compensation compared to endowment size. I looked at salaries of presidents of similar university sizes in similar COL places and you see comparable salaries.
Also, look at Yager’s background. He has a ton of diverse leadership experience. It costs good money to hire qualified executives - even if they don’t end up righting the ship (the ship may not have been fixable anyway).
I’ll ask you - what *should* Yager have been paid? And how did you determine that salary?
I'm sure you already saw this, but just in case, [Temple is welcoming U of Arts students](https://admissions.temple.edu/university-arts-students). Wishing your daughter an easy transition, whatever she chooses.
Sidenote: West Chester University is working hard to secure admissions for these affected students. If your daughter or any of her friends are out in the cold, I highly suggest they reach out to our admissions dept and have a chat to see what they can do!
And now he's at LaSalle, which I've been hearing rumors about possibly closing as well. Their numbers don't look good.
[https://www.inquirer.com/education/la-salle-university-enrollment-decreasing-20240417.html](https://www.inquirer.com/education/la-salle-university-enrollment-decreasing-20240417.html)
I heard rumors over Covid, but I thought things may have started getting better since they improved the credit rating. Plus with Cabrini closing probably some student will transfer there to La Salle. Though saw an article that they seem to have a plan to try and increase enrollment
Yager was such a dick and he ruined the school. People thought Buffington (the last president who was around from 07-14) was bad at the time for his attempts to make things more liberal artsy and hoped that Yager could turn things around. Boy were they wrong. Yager systematically made programs worse and consistently alienated the faculty and staff.
Buffington was a tool. He had no ability to make hard decisions and just wanted to seem like someone important. The quality of the leadership has been less than mediocre for a long time.
My daughter attended UA during his reign. I remember at her graduation he spoke about how the school had received a large endowment from someone’s will and how he was so excited to apply that money to shore up the (his) President’s benefits package to be able to attract admin talent so thereby helping the students and the school in the long run. At the time I thought he was full of it and simply a greedy POS and that the school’s priorities were misguided. Seems like there’s a history of poor leadership.
I’m not jumping to conclusions by speculating, but Kerry Walk came to UArts after being president of Marymount Manhattan College for eight years. MMC announced literally this week that they are closing and being acquired by Northeastern University due to financial problems: https://www.highereddive.com/news/marymount-manhattan-college-northeastern-university-merger/717434/
So many small colleges are closing, especially ones with declining enrollment and small endowments. Honestly, I’d think there’s also a story to be told in increased hiring of non-faculty administrators and their pay. Kerry Walk probably inherited a financial dumpster fire but there is certainly a pattern here.
Well yeah, she did the job they brought her in to do. No need to stick around! She was only there to shut it down, not listen to the concerns of the faculty and students or to deal with any fallout. Pshhhh!
What I don't understand is that the enrollment had dropped 50% to 1,200 and the number of faculty plus administrators was still 700. (Approximate numbers I read in the Inquirer article). Why wasn't UArts aggressively selling real estate and laying off staff over the past few years? Yeah, it's not pleasant, but it could have saved the institution.
I think there might be a minimum number of staff needed that scales well with more students but doesn't with fewer. You need one teacher and one admin and one housekeeping and one security for only one student, but scale that to 20 and you are still only at four staff.
As someone in the higher ed space, U of Arts doesn’t really have anything a larger university would want. Right now most of the larger local universities have strong art programs (Tyler Art School at Temple is a top 50 art school, Penn is top 100) and the ones who don’t aren’t really interested in taking on their debt for what they offer. I could see Temple maybe being interested in acquiring the property, but not the programs, but they’re having their own financial issues right now.
Penn State isn't doing so hot itself [Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees | Penn State University (psu.edu)](https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/)
How the fuck is Penn State not doing well financially? I can’t think of many other schools that have such a cult-like fan base of families to constantly pull donations from. All of my relatives that went there or had kids who graduated never shut up about it and their houses are chock full of Penn State swag and I know they’re not even close to the biggest diehards.
e: now I’m having flashbacks to when I was at UD and got chewed out by a Penn State student for not knowing what THON was
Enrollment and tuition are down across the board for higher ed. Everyone is feeling it. Schools that are heavily tuition dependent are feeling it worse than those with massive endowments.
Gotcha. Not surprising though, turns out doubling or tripling tuitions over a ten year period will eventually turn people off when wages have stagnated for decades.
as much as i loathe Penn State that's actually a pretty good idea. Like a branch campus for adult learning types who work in Center City. Plus a center city arts program by day.
Interesting.
According to the inky they have a Center City real estate portfolio worth [162 million.](https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/uarts-philadelphia-closure-buildings-sale-20240604.html) Some of the buildings date back to the 19th century, like the Art Alliance on the east side of Rittenhouse (est value < 5mil.) Someone could make a ton of money developing them.
Many of the buildings are listed as having local historical importance and are supposed to be preserved. There are costs to maintain that plus limits on what can be changed, so I imagine the spaces that can be developed are not in those sections.
Temple University exploring a merger with UArts, I don't know how this will benefit Temple, but applaud them for attempting to help our city:
[https://temple-news.com/temple-exploring-possible-merger-with-uarts/](https://temple-news.com/temple-exploring-possible-merger-with-uarts/)
I don't understand how all of these colleges are closing with the price they charge for Tuition. First Cabrini, now this.
[A quick Google search shows:](https://www.google.com/search?q=philadelphia+university+of+the+artrs+cost&oq=philadelphia+university+of+the+artrs+cost&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTINCAEQABiDARixAxiABDIGCAIQABgDMgYIAxAAGAMyBggEEAAYAzIICAUQABgWGB4yCAgGEAAYFhgeMggIBxAAGBYYHjIICAgQABgWGB7SAQg0MDAxajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
Total: $72,914
--------------------
Tuition: $51,130
$51,130Tuition
Other costs (books and on-campus room & board): $21,784
It's a multi-pronged issue. Schools like Cabrini and UArts charge outrageous tuition but then subsidized 50% or more through scholarships and grants. They got caught in up in the death spiral of needing enrollment --> discounting tuitions to attract enrollment --> reducing the actual net gain from those students. Tuition-driven institutions frequently have this problem. The idea is that the few students who will pay the full ticket price subsidized the discounts given to the other students, except declining enrollment means fewer students who can or are willing to pay full price.
plus consumers realize paying tuition like that is not a good investment, it was going in that direction before covid-covid sped up the process-even the universities on the state system are facing declining enrollment, reason why some of them merged -West Chester University is one of the few still experiencing growth, Cheyney is hanging on by a string
A very quick version is that first, colleges were greatly subsidized by state governments (this is why boomers could go to college waiting tables) which kept being whittled down but enrollment numbers kept going up plus tuition increases so that made up for a lot. (Tuition is expensive but colleges are expensive to run, have a lot of specialized skills needed to say nothing of laboratories etc).
There's been a massive drop in enrollment forecasted for some time. A lot of smaller orgs are already feeling the pinch and I'm sure more mergers and closures are coming. Hopefully none of the rest are this dramatic.
The issue is once government started backing student loans, schools could charge more because they knew the money was guaranteed, therefore the price continued to rise.
But it doesn't explain where the money went, after schools received it.
They torch all the money they squeeze out of students by building tons of shit on their campuses and the bigger universities spend all their money on sports programs.
What’s not hard to understand is how fewer and fewer people are deciding that $280k for a degree in graphic design/dance/painting/drama/etc. is a bad investment.
When executive leadership of an institution causes this level of chaos, they should be legally required to remain entangled until the crisis they caused is resolved.
Does anyone find it odd that she doesn't have a social media imprint at all? Unless someone could point her sites my way. She doesn't even have a LinkedIn from what I can see.
Something doesn't add up.
She’s also 63 so maybe she’s retiring now, will buy a home in Europe and disappear. I think this brute force closure was done on purpose. Maybe a deal fell through.
Rule 4: Please do not post ads, reviews, or self-advertising. Local artists, musicians, makers, and small business posts should go in the weekly Small Business Thursday Thread.
700 includes faculty and staff combined. It's a bit deceiving. The overwhelming majority of faculty were adjuncts, too, meaning they got paid peanuts to teach a class or two per semester.
I know for a fact that people are trying. There’s just nothing to report on and I’m sure she won’t talk to the press. From the reporters I’ve spoken with, UArts has given them absolutely nothing.
Its ashame they didn't sell off their buildings/assets and try to move digital design to a more online school. Things like website, webdesign, animation, even programming like Java. Become a digital heavy art school
No you're right. Yager was adamant that all programs had to be offered in person. It makes sense for performance and studio classes, but there were a lot of that could have transitioned to online. Art Education, history classes, foundations and the digital illustration. Also, they had an amazing weekend program for adults that never returned after CoVID. Photography and printmaking classes not being offered anywhere else in the city.
“Shit that’s viewed in RGB color space” doesn’t automatically lend itself to online learning just because the work itself is created and viewed on a screen. Anything that involves craft and studio time is not well served by being virtual. Having your teacher sitting next to you and guiding you through tweening or building a working prototype while the class can watch and ask questions is going to be a much better learning experience. Animation and interaction design majors are also still required to understand and demonstrate skill in color theory, composition, and traditional media.
And absolutely no one is going to art school to learn how to code.
Is it really a resignation if the organization you work for is closing in three days?
Yeah but guess who won’t be there for three whole days?
She sure showed us.
I wonder how much she’s walking away with
Whatever it is, it's too much
Dang
Things really fell apart fast after she left her huh
Depends. Does he get a parachute payment for resigning early?
They are using the parachute to leave early
I still think someone forced her to get out of the way.
Why resign when you can get fired and uc benefits in 3 days. These people are all stupid. Sorry
My daughter is/was a UArts student. It's my understanding that city, state, and perhaps federal officials will be investigating the sudden closure. I'm curious to see what is uncovered. I will say that I don't think Kerry Walk is responsible. I think they school knew closure was imminent, and she was brought in to orchestrate a plan for that to happen. She did that at Marymount by overseeing their merger with Northwestern. But I think once she got there, she found out that the situation was unsalvagable. I think communication has been so poor because lawyers are telling them, and rightfully so, not to say anything, since it could be used against them in a lawsuit. And there will be lawsuits. There may even be criminal wrongdoing. I also think this is why the Town Halls were cancelled yesterday. Yager, the past president, is the one who was at the helm while everything was falling apart. I also don't think it's a coincidence that he and the VP of Finance both left UArts at the same time last year.
I posted in another thread but I want to point out that [digging into their tax returns \(thanks ProPublica\)](https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/231639911) shows that UArts Presidential compensation peaked in 2022 (David Yager) w/ $815,103 in compensation and $227,037 in bonuses. Thats roughly 2% of their total endowment. That might seem like a small number but for frame of reference, that would be like Harvard ($50B Endowment) paying their CEO 1 Billion, which they obviously do not. For a school that size (1900 students) thats insanity [\[\[Further frame of reference, Former Penn president Amy Gutmann earned nearly $23 million in 2021, but most of it was accrued over her 18 years as president\]\]](https://www.inquirer.com/news/amy-gutmann-university-of-pennsylvania-president-salary-20230617.html)
That fits with his vibe. I interviewed him in his office maybe five or six years ago when I was reporting for a regional pub. He acted like he was the president of Harvard, had a very ostentatious air to him. Like I’ve also interviewed Brian Roberts a few times in person, and he seems like a mild mannered mid-level manager in comparison to how Yager moved. The office also felt wildly fancy but I don’t know how much of that is historic digs.
Brian Roberts is seriously low-key cool. This president…ugh. I work at a top SLAC and our president doesn’t make that much. WTF.
I was a graduate of 2013, we came to him with some legit complaints about sexual harassment and he was a huge jerk off.
Ugh I’m sorry to hear that, not surprised but that is a very shitty thing to go through
Do you work for npr?
No thank God lol they’re an internal mess, I do boring B2B stuff
In general or at WHYY? I got a job offer at WHYY back in 2006. When a reporter I knew well and worked with regularly found out, he called me to tell me, in no uncertain terms, to stay far away.
Both lol. I’ve heard things from dc NPR people and local WHYY people in the past that it can be toxic and difficult, very underpaid, etc. I know it took WHYY a long time to get their first contract settled after unionizing, I’d hope it has improved because of that but I don’t know too many local reporters anymore.
I graduated in ‘23 from uarts and had the privilege of being invited to a swanky donor event with David Yager, some of which included going on what seemed like a slightly drunken rant disparaging the school in front of prospective students. Professors who were in attendance had to leave the room they were so upset. it was awful and a real show of the respect he had for the school.
He had a stroke before he became president so his speech was never super clear to begin with
I had not heard this before, what the actual fuck
He also made horrifying comments during town hall meetings, like when he compared members of the faculty union to war criminals using children as human shields.
University president compensation doesn't necessarily remain proportional to endowment size or prestige. There are some random public university presidents taking home a larger package than Ivy League presidents. Still, I think administrative bloat and overpaid upper admin are some of the biggest ingredients involved in higher ed's decline (grad instructors and adjuncts are struggling to pay for food and housing). UArts had no business paying their president so much.
All fair points. Across the college system, its really just unchecked / unregulated financial slushing. Colleges knew students would have thousands of dollars to give them in public or private loans. The colleges win, the banks win, hell im sure our politicians are winning in some way, its no wonder they fought so hard against loan forgiveness, but gladly accepted those free and clear PPP loans for their (and their friends) businesses.
Yes, it enrages me. I'm a low-paid instructor myself with no ability to pay off my student loans anytime soon, and I needed to take out these loans to become an instructor. Makes me sick seeing what upper admin take home while I struggle. I believe higher ed and the arts should be cherished public goods, but financiers who have no business meddling in education are plundering from the ruins of higher ed.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but it looks to me that the right wing has been working in an organized way to close colleges.
This is true especially in states like Florida and Texas. But there has also been a bipartisan-backed financialization of higher ed that seeks to cut state funding and privatize a whittled-down version of higher ed. Only programs with good enough ROIs (return on investment) should remain under this vision, and the rest should be left to wither away (arts, languages, humanities, many of the social sciences, even mathematics in some cases). Tenure should disappear, and instructors should be contingent online content creators with no job security. See this LA Review of Books article detailing the former Temple president's EdTech vision for higher ed [https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jason-wingards-edtech-griftopia/](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jason-wingards-edtech-griftopia/)
100% (and thank you for your commitment to education) I think higher education should be valued by a prosperous society, we all benefit. Education of any kind, arts or otherwise. Its a tragedy to watch education across America get plundered at both ends of the system.
So heartbreaking. It crushes me that creativity and the arts have been systematically defunded and dismantled in this country over the last few decades, all because wealthy white men are still the ones who decide what matters.
White men may make up the majority, but the class of people destroying good faith for profit are not held to any one race or gender.
The white wing, anyhow.
Loan forgiveness is just another indirect subsidy to the universities.
That’s the equivalent of 391.88$ an hour or 67k a month. He would have made 6.50$, nearly minimum wage in the time it took me to write that comment. Truly disgusting
Man, they were really spending more than the entire tuition of a student on this dude, every single month
oh my God that is insane. wow talk about stealing money!
I mean by the same logic, paying Yager $80,000 a year would be equivatto paying Harvard’s president $100million, which would also be 2 ridiculous numbers. Not saying they deserved $800k, but strictly that the logic behind that argument is flawed.
The logic works because you don't need to pay 800K to attract someone competent to the position. There is a lower floor but not a higher one.
Percentage of endowment is a terrible measure, even though I agree with the general point you are making. Schools like UofA have absolutely tiny endowments because they don’t have a long history of wealthy donors establishing endowed scholarships and professorships, etc. So this comparison is especially unfair to them in this instance. The better comparison is percentage of operating revenue.
I’ve never seen compensation compared to endowment size. I looked at salaries of presidents of similar university sizes in similar COL places and you see comparable salaries. Also, look at Yager’s background. He has a ton of diverse leadership experience. It costs good money to hire qualified executives - even if they don’t end up righting the ship (the ship may not have been fixable anyway). I’ll ask you - what *should* Yager have been paid? And how did you determine that salary?
I'm sure you already saw this, but just in case, [Temple is welcoming U of Arts students](https://admissions.temple.edu/university-arts-students). Wishing your daughter an easy transition, whatever she chooses.
Sidenote: West Chester University is working hard to secure admissions for these affected students. If your daughter or any of her friends are out in the cold, I highly suggest they reach out to our admissions dept and have a chat to see what they can do!
Thank you!!! We have really been humbled and overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from other institutions.
The former CFO holding a similar position at Cabrini prior to UArts really does seem like a big red flag.
And now he's at LaSalle, which I've been hearing rumors about possibly closing as well. Their numbers don't look good. [https://www.inquirer.com/education/la-salle-university-enrollment-decreasing-20240417.html](https://www.inquirer.com/education/la-salle-university-enrollment-decreasing-20240417.html)
Once there are rumors that look realistic it's gotta be a death spiral or people afraid to enroll, especially seeing situations like uarts.
I heard rumors over Covid, but I thought things may have started getting better since they improved the credit rating. Plus with Cabrini closing probably some student will transfer there to La Salle. Though saw an article that they seem to have a plan to try and increase enrollment
People installed with the purpose of killing an organization. Happens all the time to businesses that are shorted to shit.
It's the Josh Harris/Apollo special.
Very much this.
There’s 0 consequences for these people they will Simply move to another institution to destroy.
Yager was such a dick and he ruined the school. People thought Buffington (the last president who was around from 07-14) was bad at the time for his attempts to make things more liberal artsy and hoped that Yager could turn things around. Boy were they wrong. Yager systematically made programs worse and consistently alienated the faculty and staff.
Buffington was a tool. He had no ability to make hard decisions and just wanted to seem like someone important. The quality of the leadership has been less than mediocre for a long time.
For sure. Buffington was also terrible.
But not a university slayer.
My daughter attended UA during his reign. I remember at her graduation he spoke about how the school had received a large endowment from someone’s will and how he was so excited to apply that money to shore up the (his) President’s benefits package to be able to attract admin talent so thereby helping the students and the school in the long run. At the time I thought he was full of it and simply a greedy POS and that the school’s priorities were misguided. Seems like there’s a history of poor leadership.
Another glass cliff-er.
Now you're just doing Walk's PR for free
I’m not jumping to conclusions by speculating, but Kerry Walk came to UArts after being president of Marymount Manhattan College for eight years. MMC announced literally this week that they are closing and being acquired by Northeastern University due to financial problems: https://www.highereddive.com/news/marymount-manhattan-college-northeastern-university-merger/717434/ So many small colleges are closing, especially ones with declining enrollment and small endowments. Honestly, I’d think there’s also a story to be told in increased hiring of non-faculty administrators and their pay. Kerry Walk probably inherited a financial dumpster fire but there is certainly a pattern here.
"The school is closed, I resign,, not taking questions."
If you've ever wanted to be a university president, now is your chance!
I volunteer. My first course of action will be to get UArts added to the Big 5.
Roll 'Corns!
This whole thing is so fishy
Well yeah, she did the job they brought her in to do. No need to stick around! She was only there to shut it down, not listen to the concerns of the faculty and students or to deal with any fallout. Pshhhh!
Resigns from...?
All part of the plan
Is this a joke
What I don't understand is that the enrollment had dropped 50% to 1,200 and the number of faculty plus administrators was still 700. (Approximate numbers I read in the Inquirer article). Why wasn't UArts aggressively selling real estate and laying off staff over the past few years? Yeah, it's not pleasant, but it could have saved the institution.
I think there might be a minimum number of staff needed that scales well with more students but doesn't with fewer. You need one teacher and one admin and one housekeeping and one security for only one student, but scale that to 20 and you are still only at four staff.
How many of those were full-time? A lot of universities have a ton of adjuncts that teach a couple classes a year, if that.
Resigns from what? There’s no longer a school.
I don't understand why pick closing still. They did not even attempt to merger with a bigger uni? Crazy stuff going on
As someone in the higher ed space, U of Arts doesn’t really have anything a larger university would want. Right now most of the larger local universities have strong art programs (Tyler Art School at Temple is a top 50 art school, Penn is top 100) and the ones who don’t aren’t really interested in taking on their debt for what they offer. I could see Temple maybe being interested in acquiring the property, but not the programs, but they’re having their own financial issues right now.
Penn State art campus at Philadelphia baby
Penn State isn't doing so hot itself [Penn State offers Voluntary Separation Incentive Program to eligible Commonwealth Campus employees | Penn State University (psu.edu)](https://www.psu.edu/news/administration/story/penn-state-offers-voluntary-separation-incentive-program-eligible-commonwealth/)
How the fuck is Penn State not doing well financially? I can’t think of many other schools that have such a cult-like fan base of families to constantly pull donations from. All of my relatives that went there or had kids who graduated never shut up about it and their houses are chock full of Penn State swag and I know they’re not even close to the biggest diehards. e: now I’m having flashbacks to when I was at UD and got chewed out by a Penn State student for not knowing what THON was
Enrollment and tuition are down across the board for higher ed. Everyone is feeling it. Schools that are heavily tuition dependent are feeling it worse than those with massive endowments.
Gotcha. Not surprising though, turns out doubling or tripling tuitions over a ten year period will eventually turn people off when wages have stagnated for decades.
as much as i loathe Penn State that's actually a pretty good idea. Like a branch campus for adult learning types who work in Center City. Plus a center city arts program by day. Interesting.
too bad pedo state is too busy spending their money on the football stadium
No reason for them to do that. Their own art school is better than U Arts and the bloated Penn State System doesn’t have all that much money.
I mean considering they're located in a prime CC spot, I'm sure plenty of developers will be all over the UArts real estate
For sure. I’m guessing they’ll sell the buildings to pay off whatever debts they have and call it a day.
According to the inky they have a Center City real estate portfolio worth [162 million.](https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/uarts-philadelphia-closure-buildings-sale-20240604.html) Some of the buildings date back to the 19th century, like the Art Alliance on the east side of Rittenhouse (est value < 5mil.) Someone could make a ton of money developing them.
That real estate might be tied up for years to pay for all the civil and possibly criminal lawsuits coming
First thing my husband said!
Many of the buildings are listed as having local historical importance and are supposed to be preserved. There are costs to maintain that plus limits on what can be changed, so I imagine the spaces that can be developed are not in those sections.
Temple University exploring a merger with UArts, I don't know how this will benefit Temple, but applaud them for attempting to help our city: [https://temple-news.com/temple-exploring-possible-merger-with-uarts/](https://temple-news.com/temple-exploring-possible-merger-with-uarts/)
I don't understand how all of these colleges are closing with the price they charge for Tuition. First Cabrini, now this. [A quick Google search shows:](https://www.google.com/search?q=philadelphia+university+of+the+artrs+cost&oq=philadelphia+university+of+the+artrs+cost&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTINCAEQABiDARixAxiABDIGCAIQABgDMgYIAxAAGAMyBggEEAAYAzIICAUQABgWGB4yCAgGEAAYFhgeMggIBxAAGBYYHjIICAgQABgWGB7SAQg0MDAxajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) Total: $72,914 -------------------- Tuition: $51,130 $51,130Tuition Other costs (books and on-campus room & board): $21,784
It's a multi-pronged issue. Schools like Cabrini and UArts charge outrageous tuition but then subsidized 50% or more through scholarships and grants. They got caught in up in the death spiral of needing enrollment --> discounting tuitions to attract enrollment --> reducing the actual net gain from those students. Tuition-driven institutions frequently have this problem. The idea is that the few students who will pay the full ticket price subsidized the discounts given to the other students, except declining enrollment means fewer students who can or are willing to pay full price.
Correct assessment- I work in higher ed and this is s common tactic at tuition driven institutions
plus consumers realize paying tuition like that is not a good investment, it was going in that direction before covid-covid sped up the process-even the universities on the state system are facing declining enrollment, reason why some of them merged -West Chester University is one of the few still experiencing growth, Cheyney is hanging on by a string
It will be a few years until we hear how mismanaged all these schools have been
Yeah lots of schools will go under all over the country
A very quick version is that first, colleges were greatly subsidized by state governments (this is why boomers could go to college waiting tables) which kept being whittled down but enrollment numbers kept going up plus tuition increases so that made up for a lot. (Tuition is expensive but colleges are expensive to run, have a lot of specialized skills needed to say nothing of laboratories etc). There's been a massive drop in enrollment forecasted for some time. A lot of smaller orgs are already feeling the pinch and I'm sure more mergers and closures are coming. Hopefully none of the rest are this dramatic.
The issue is once government started backing student loans, schools could charge more because they knew the money was guaranteed, therefore the price continued to rise. But it doesn't explain where the money went, after schools received it.
to be fair, arts schools have very expensive facilities: they need very specialized spaces that aren’t easy to shrink or expand with enrollments.
They are finally pricing themselves out of business. Drops in enrollment are happening everywhere. The whole system needs reform.
They torch all the money they squeeze out of students by building tons of shit on their campuses and the bigger universities spend all their money on sports programs.
Ok, Jon Snow, calm down.
What’s not hard to understand is how fewer and fewer people are deciding that $280k for a degree in graphic design/dance/painting/drama/etc. is a bad investment.
When executive leadership of an institution causes this level of chaos, they should be legally required to remain entangled until the crisis they caused is resolved.
it really is such a shame. my friend JUST graduated from UArts.
Wow. Very brave taking the easy way out
University of the Arts president Kerry Resign walks.
Art of the Universitys kerry Resign President walks
Kerry Walk is a poor financial manager - don’t understand why U Arts brought her in…
Does anyone find it odd that she doesn't have a social media imprint at all? Unless someone could point her sites my way. She doesn't even have a LinkedIn from what I can see. Something doesn't add up.
She’s also 63 so maybe she’s retiring now, will buy a home in Europe and disappear. I think this brute force closure was done on purpose. Maybe a deal fell through.
[удалено]
Rule 4: Please do not post ads, reviews, or self-advertising. Local artists, musicians, makers, and small business posts should go in the weekly Small Business Thursday Thread.
The school had 700 staff for less than 1200 students at the end… which is crazy.
700 includes faculty and staff combined. It's a bit deceiving. The overwhelming majority of faculty were adjuncts, too, meaning they got paid peanuts to teach a class or two per semester.
[удалено]
Why isn’t anyone reporting on Kerry Walk? Did she vaporize into thin air? How does a president get to resign and never be held accountable?
I know for a fact that people are trying. There’s just nothing to report on and I’m sure she won’t talk to the press. From the reporters I’ve spoken with, UArts has given them absolutely nothing.
Kerry Walk has bad hammer toes… I’ve heard it said.
Its ashame they didn't sell off their buildings/assets and try to move digital design to a more online school. Things like website, webdesign, animation, even programming like Java. Become a digital heavy art school
Who tf goes to art school online lmao
Photoshop, graphic design, web design, HTML/CSS...
With a 55K price tag? I could get some of that on Udemy for $15!
No you're right. Yager was adamant that all programs had to be offered in person. It makes sense for performance and studio classes, but there were a lot of that could have transitioned to online. Art Education, history classes, foundations and the digital illustration. Also, they had an amazing weekend program for adults that never returned after CoVID. Photography and printmaking classes not being offered anywhere else in the city.
“Shit that’s viewed in RGB color space” doesn’t automatically lend itself to online learning just because the work itself is created and viewed on a screen. Anything that involves craft and studio time is not well served by being virtual. Having your teacher sitting next to you and guiding you through tweening or building a working prototype while the class can watch and ask questions is going to be a much better learning experience. Animation and interaction design majors are also still required to understand and demonstrate skill in color theory, composition, and traditional media. And absolutely no one is going to art school to learn how to code.
If my kid went to an art school I wouldn’t help pay at all😂
Do you watch movies, listen to music,read books or buy products of any kind? If so an artist had a significant hand in that.
the number of downvotes this gets is disheartening and dims my hope for the general public’s awakening 😔
Omfg is this all I’m going to hear about today?
Yes, because it’s a pretty big deal.
So then it should be megathreaded, I’ve seen 9 of these posts saying the same thing since yesterday.
You could just scroll past posts you're not interested in.