A Philadelphia arts school gave 7 days' notice it was closing. Now its students and faculty want answers.
Students and staff members from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia are scrambling to figure out their next steps after the school’s abrupt closure last week and are calling on the university to answer questions about why it shut down so quickly.
Students and staff members from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia are scrambling to figure out their next steps after the school’s abrupt closure last week and are calling on the university to answer questions about why it shut down so quickly.
The university announced it would be shutting its doors in a statement on May 31, after news had already begun to leak about an hour and a half earlier, saying in part that it “has been in a fragile financial state, with many years of declining enrollments, declining revenues, and increasing expenses.”
The nearly 150-year-old university, a longtime home for artists of all kinds, shut down a week later on June 7, leaving its more than 1,000 students and hundreds of faculty and staff confused and anxious.
Among them is Owen Spaloss, who walked across the stage at the university’s graduation in May, but still needs to complete a three-credit summer internship to receive his degree in creative writing. The unexpected shutdown has put his once imminent degree completion at least temporarily out of reach.
“A lot of these universities don’t have a creative writing major, and even if they do, there’s no guarantee that they would accept all of my credits or that they would accept scholarships,” Spaloss said.
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