Philadelphia shuts down University of Arts
NewsMessage from President Kerry Walk and Chair of the Board of Trustees Judson Aaron:
Today is a heartbreaking day.
University of the Arts will close as of Friday June 7, 2024. We would have shared this news with you directly, but the Middle States Commission on Higher Education elected to withdraw UArts’ accreditation and announce before we could communicate with you. We know that this makes hearing the news of UArts’ abrupt closure even worse.
The closure means that we will be canceling our summer courses, we will not enroll a new class in the fall, and we will support our continuing students in their progress to degree by developing seamless transfer pathways to our partners: Temple University, Drexel University, and Moore College of Art and Design, among others.
We know that the news of UArts’ closure comes as a shock. 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. We have worked hard this year alongside many of you to take steps that would secure the University’s sustainability. The progress we made together has been impressive.
Unfortunately, however, we could not overcome the ultimate challenge we faced: with a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses. The situation came to light very suddenly. Despite swift action, we were unable to bridge the necessary gaps.
On Monday, June 3, 2024 we will host separate town hall meetings for students, faculty, and staff; we will send times and details for those town halls over the coming weekend. We are committed to providing a space for your questions and concerns.
We have done everything in our power to address this crisis and avoid the worst possible outcome: an abrupt closure. Yet we have reached this deeply painful outcome, which we know affects our entire community.
We are grateful for all you’re doing to support one another during this most difficult time.”
And right next to the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. But arts departments everywhere are suffering. Vincent Persichetti was a graduate way back when.
Arts departments are suffering because young people are not being raised to read, or study history, or to put down their damned phones in the classroom. By the time they approach university, if they are not already “influencers” the only way forward they can see is to register either in some sort of IT or in business studies.
Their reading skills do not extend much beyond 140 characters. They know nothing outside their own experience.
As an arts graduate I lament the stripping of culture from our society — on this forum we discuss the shrinkage of serious music in society; art fora probably have similar problems. But having to live, I hope a good deal longer, I am more worried about the danger to science education.
This generation, and to some extent the one preceding it, have grown up utterly opposed to doing anything HARD. They have been raised without opposition — teachers are scared to contradict kids whose entire universe is themselves and their “friends.”
They do not grow up admiring achievement. They want fame.
It takes effort to become a doctor, or nurse, or vet, or builder of bridges and roads and aeroplanes and phones, or lawyer. Let alone musician, artist, writer, athlete.
It takes effort to THINK, and the absence of that effort is available in below the line comments on almost any site on the internet.
How can you expect such people to see the value of an education in the arts and humanities? Its informative, civilising effect? We live in dangerous times, and the absence of any exposure to the facts and wisdom of the past is a huge part of the reason. Reason itself has dropped by the wayside.
I agree with so much of what you’ve written. Back in the 1970s, there was a push for ‘relevant’ education the aim of which was to make for high school graduates who would be able to leave high school and go directly into retail positions, i.e. cashiers, restockers, etc., and for those graduates not to have come up with an understanding of Shakespeare, Beethoven, or anything smacking of a sense of literature, music, history or the arts. Those people won the battle and now we are seeing the result.
Nice
Less woke hamas-brainwashed lefties produced
Idiot.
Very appropriate comment for this, the arts section of the Daily Stormer.
Very interesting how certain types of comments don’t get banned in certain places of “high culture”.
Wow, big blow to the City of Philadelphia. As another commenter noted, its iconic campus building is next door to the Kimmel Center along with its other facilities that made the UArts campus a big piece of South Broad Street’s branding as “Avenue of the Arts.”
UArts started as a music conservatory and remained one for nearly a century (yes, Persichetti studied there.) The great Philadelphia Orchestra piccoloist John Krell taught there in the 1960s when it was still the Philadelphia Musical Academy. It later absorbed dance, theater and rebranded as the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts until the mid-1980s. One of my flute colleagues in the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra was a student of the great Julius Baker as an undergrad at UArts. The fact that Krell and Baker had studios there says a lot of how respected the school used to be as a conservatory. I have no idea who teaches flute there now or if anyone even does.
Seems like once it merged with the visual arts things got diluted. The music programs these days seemed more band/jazz oriented, and the visual arts came across as pretty dominant. No one seemed to study classical music there anymore, but you could see into their visual arts galleries and the outdoor installations along Broad Street.
RIP to a once great conservatory.
As a former lowly supermarket cashier (and lover of classical music), I take exception to some of the above comments (though I’m far too polite to be specific which)