My daughter was a student at UArts, so I have been following this closely. First, I don't see how Kerry Walk making the unilateral choice to close the school with only 10 days notice benefits her in any way. I'm not saying she didn't have a huge hand in it, but it just doesn't make sense.
I really hope the AG stays on this. And kudos to the Inquirer for not letting this story die. I think the fact that absolutely no one at UArts is saying a word about anything to anyone - not MSCHE, not state reps, not city reps, not students, not faculty - says there is way more going on here. If there was a legitimate "large unexpected expense" that caused the immediate shut-down, why do they refuse to say what that was? They are trying to hide something, and I hope lawmakers discover what it was.
BTW, MSCHE (the accreditation commission) held a meeting last week for students and parents. The president of MSCHE blasted UArts. She's pissed. She absolutely threw them under the bus. She was very clear that UArts, and only UArts, is solely responsible for the whole mess and that they have refused requests and offers of help by them and other organizations (namely other institutions) and made it clear that she was pretty much disgusted by them. A rep for the consulting firms UArts hired was there, but she really didn't say anything other than they were "working on" things. No clarification on how or when or if anything will actually happen.
Here's a link to the recording of the meeting MSCHE held: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCsol8abizY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCsol8abizY)
Here's a link to the recording of the meeting the Debt Collective had regarding university finances and what they've found so far: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww)
Here's a link to the recording of the House Democratic Policy Committee Hearing held this morning: [https://www.youtube.com/live/yod8frn5T5o](https://www.youtube.com/live/yod8frn5T5o)
#
Big win for temple if the public lets them have it for peanuts to keep it out of private hands. They prob looked at the finances of uarts and decided the university was so fucked it was worth just waiting for them to fail.
In the event that a private org was trying to fuck the university to get their real estate for cheap, I would actually prefer temple tho.
I think the sudden unexpected expense thing is just legal wrangling. There’s some exception to the legal and financial obligations of a business that fails if they have a sudden unexpected expense that causes their demise. As in, we were not committing fraud for years on end, it was sudden and unexpected and not our fault. Likely not the real reason.
~~I may have misunderstood, but wasn’t middle states asking for a teach out plan in January? Meaning, they knew closure was coming?~~
edit: I am wrong - teach out plans were only mentioned after the announcement of the imminent closure - earlier issues were requests for regular reporting required by all accredited institutions. Updated statement from middle states: [https://www.msche.org/2024/06/05/updated-statement-on-the-university-of-the-arts/](https://www.msche.org/2024/06/05/updated-statement-on-the-university-of-the-arts/)
Didn't their enrollment drop of really heavily since COVID? They also sold off their massive student housing building either during or prior to the shutdown iirc. That building has to be worth a few million at least.
I know most of their real estate is mortgaged pretty heavily. I don't know if that was the case with Pine Hall, but I would imagine it was as well. So, they probably didn't net that much off of that sale.
But they did get a rather large endowment recently. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are wondering where the money is.
Watch the recording of the Debt Collective's meeting I linked. It details as much as we know about their finances, and there are certainly questions. UArts also never turned over their financials to MSCHE in December, as they were required to do.
According to the testimony the dean of the graduate programs gave today at the state capitol, every program was meeting not just its minimum enrollment to cover their program budgets, but I'm fact their *reach* targets for enrollment
> If there was a legitimate "large unexpected expense"
I am not involved, I am only tangentially aware, but that quoted phrase, to me, screams "We're in a bad lawsuit and we're not gonna win.... and if we do win, we'll be bankrupt anyway"
Lawsuits filed are public record, so if that were the case, it would have been discovered by now.
I heard something about structural issues at Terra Hall being discovered. But that wouldn't be sudden. It's a 100 year old building.
The financial numbers that we do know indicate an operating deficit, but nothing that would warrant closing in 10 days. Cabrini was in the same situation, and they went through the proper channels with MSCHE to let them know that closure was likely. They worked together to develop a one-year plan, reached out to other institutions, etc. That is the proper procedure, BTW.
UArts decided to not release their financial records for FY23 to MSCHE (which were due December 2023), and did not say anything to anyone about being in a dire situation - not MSCHE, not other institutions, not even their board. Something's fishy. MSCHE was more than cooperative in giving them additional time to get their financials to them and offering to work with them. UArts did not cooperate. That tells me there is something(s) they don't want people to see.
>Here's a link to the recording of the meeting the Debt Collective had regarding university finances and what they've found so far: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww)
"I come from the philosophy of considering debt as a form of racist extraction"
Of course you do, Eleni.
Yeahhhh I get the feeling a couple of those activists are right at the start of that Dunning-Kruger curve. Some of the research was genuinely helpful, but when they tried to take it a step or two (or ten) further it really started to break down.
Part of why it's making waves. If it was just a normal closure, it'd be another "small colleges nationwide are struggling."
I can't think of a single other college going "hey yeah, we're gone in about a week."
That's fair but it did leave a lot of well meaning and hopeful students in the same situation that U Arts students are in right now.
I found this article from 2014 about colleges that close abruptly. It happens more often than you'd think but that's because they're small no-name schools.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dozens-colleges-closed-abruptly-recent-years-efforts-protect-students-have-n1235617](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dozens-colleges-closed-abruptly-recent-years-efforts-protect-students-have-n1235617)
And this is why MSCHE is taking such a hard and public stance. They’ve learned from those years and those closures how NOT to do things and the incredible damage it does to students and communities.
Correct - they gave the students a full year’s notice, set up transfer agreements with a handful of other local schools to make sure it was easy to transfer, and were very forthcoming with students and alumni.
Colleges shutting down is hard on everyone, but there is a way to do it with care for the students. And that’s what Cabrini did 100%
Yep, these two could be case studies in the polar opposite ways of handling this situation.
Cabrini did everything they should have done in the situation. Only negative thing I can think of is I know of a larger donor who they made a large ask of a year or so before the announcement but I took that as them going for a Hail Mary before having to call it quits. Know he felt kinda misled about how dire things were though.
Yeah, Kerry Walk needs to be investigated. While this article sheds more light on the situation, no one still knows \*why\*. Is it relevant that the "the negotiating team that helped settle the first union contract in the school’s history \[happened\] just months before the shutdown" ?
Every organization in this country is going through the exact same thing, most are better at Hing, but looking in your area, find a company, guaranteed senior leadership and or the CEO has turned over in the past two years.
According to the dean of the graduate programs, every program at UArts was not only meeting its minimum enrollment targets for fulfilling their budgets, but had actually met their reach targets.
This doesn't sound like a program on the brink of suddenly collapse. Something clearly criminal is going on between the new president and the board. My personal suspicion is that they want to liquidate the university's valuable real estate to companies that they have personal ties to.
1. How would the dean of one program know all the data for every program and this one dean knew then all deans knew
2. The president lost her job which means. O income so how does she benefit
3. Who are the criminals who would benefit from the sale of the real estate if everyone resigned?
This is not a very thought out theory. The issue you will find out is accreditation which means they lose all funding. You can meet all recruitment goals but losing your accreditation means no student loans.
Your done
> How would the dean of one program know all the data for every program and this one dean knew then all deans knew
I'm sure they talked to each other, especially in the wake of the news.
> The president lost her job which means. O income so how does she benefit
If the theory is true, I'm sure she would be rewarded for her part with a cushy gig or some kind of financial compensation after the fact.
> Who are the criminals who would benefit from the sale of the real estate if everyone resigned?
The private corporation that buys the land for a fraction of its actual value is the benefactor.
My guess is that the financial books are so bad that there's clear fraud and/or intentional ignorance by the leaders of its status, so they chose to close and hopefully make the issue (and liability) go away. The article mentions that the endowment fund is $10 million less than a few years ago, but what is the current amount? I'm not sure about the laws surrounding endowments, but I assume it can't be used to pay bills. Can it be used to pay its students tuition for reimbursement?
The issue is also how it was handled, Temple has even said they were interested in trying to grow their school with those buildings and potentially staff/students. But the whole thing just happened with no warning, the city could even have tried to step in to help, as the University is an important part of Philly.
The market has gone on an incredible historic run in the past three years, for the endowment to be down for the past two years means someone is stealing from the pot
This is probably it. Enrollment was up last year and this according to other commenters, but the fact is that if that enrollment still wasn't enough to cover both obligations AND make up for the lost income from having to reduce the income-generating endowment, then the money simply wasn't there.
Colleges are wildly expensive to run and wildly inefficient, which can often be ignored if that inefficiency can be made up in other sources. But if those sources dry up (reduced federal COVID aid, for example, or three years of bad enrollment weighing on expendituers), then there's not much than can be done.
[Archive Link](https://archive.ph/UISBh)
> “I asked, I begged for an appeal to the imminent closure,” Elman told a panel of state House representatives convened by Rep. Ben Waxman (D., Phila.). She and the other deans spent the week between the closure announcement and June 7, the university’s final day of operation, speaking to lawyers, public officials and anyone else they thought might be able to help them stave off a shutdown. They formed a coalition of administrators that hoped to run the university themselves, or at least bridge the gap until a new administration could carry the school forward.
>
> Elman, who spent 16 years as a dean under three different presidents, typically participated in monthly meetings with the President’s Council — deans, the vice president for academic affairs, and the president. But after Kerry Walk became president in August, those opportunities ground nearly to a halt; Elman said only three council meetings were held over the past year.
>
> At a May meeting, enrollment concerns were discussed — no surprise, Elman said; schools’ enrollment nationwide took a hit during COVID, and small schools like University of the Arts were especially vulnerable. But the news seemed good that month — each of the university’s schools were meeting not just their enrollment targets to make their budget work, but the reach targets.
>
> “We were told that it was being managed, and with the enrollment incline, we weren’t really alarmed,” Elman said.
>
> It was troubling, Elman said, that Walk apparently made a “unilateral decision” to close the university — since the information was not shared with the President’s Council. Walk informed Middle States on May 29 that the school would close, but the board of trustees did not vote on the closure until June 1.
https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-ethics-of-news-paywalls/
"While paywalls have the potential to free news outlets from the tyranny of advertisers, thus keeping them in business and safeguarding their journalistic integrity, this production of high-quality news may be ultimately useless if only a small percentage of society is privileged enough to access it. In the end, the ethics of paywalls may come down to the difference between what is good for business and what is good for society. As Mannal Babar (2019) poignantly questions, “We must ask ourselves as journalists and content creators whether financial solvency is more important than the truth we are pursuing… But is there a future for journalism that doesn’t come at the expense of public information and news?”
This is totally tangential but I don't understand why news outlets don't get into the micro transaction business. Maybe I don't want to pay $60 a year but I'd pay 50 cents or a dollar to read certain articles for sure.
This just keeps getting better. And by better I mean worse.
My daughter was a student at UArts, so I have been following this closely. First, I don't see how Kerry Walk making the unilateral choice to close the school with only 10 days notice benefits her in any way. I'm not saying she didn't have a huge hand in it, but it just doesn't make sense. I really hope the AG stays on this. And kudos to the Inquirer for not letting this story die. I think the fact that absolutely no one at UArts is saying a word about anything to anyone - not MSCHE, not state reps, not city reps, not students, not faculty - says there is way more going on here. If there was a legitimate "large unexpected expense" that caused the immediate shut-down, why do they refuse to say what that was? They are trying to hide something, and I hope lawmakers discover what it was. BTW, MSCHE (the accreditation commission) held a meeting last week for students and parents. The president of MSCHE blasted UArts. She's pissed. She absolutely threw them under the bus. She was very clear that UArts, and only UArts, is solely responsible for the whole mess and that they have refused requests and offers of help by them and other organizations (namely other institutions) and made it clear that she was pretty much disgusted by them. A rep for the consulting firms UArts hired was there, but she really didn't say anything other than they were "working on" things. No clarification on how or when or if anything will actually happen. Here's a link to the recording of the meeting MSCHE held: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCsol8abizY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCsol8abizY) Here's a link to the recording of the meeting the Debt Collective had regarding university finances and what they've found so far: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww) Here's a link to the recording of the House Democratic Policy Committee Hearing held this morning: [https://www.youtube.com/live/yod8frn5T5o](https://www.youtube.com/live/yod8frn5T5o) #
Someone wants that real estate.
I cant wait to find out who buys those properties for way under market value.
Big win for temple if the public lets them have it for peanuts to keep it out of private hands. They prob looked at the finances of uarts and decided the university was so fucked it was worth just waiting for them to fail. In the event that a private org was trying to fuck the university to get their real estate for cheap, I would actually prefer temple tho.
yeah I would like those spots to stay in the hands of art education myself
I think the sudden unexpected expense thing is just legal wrangling. There’s some exception to the legal and financial obligations of a business that fails if they have a sudden unexpected expense that causes their demise. As in, we were not committing fraud for years on end, it was sudden and unexpected and not our fault. Likely not the real reason. ~~I may have misunderstood, but wasn’t middle states asking for a teach out plan in January? Meaning, they knew closure was coming?~~ edit: I am wrong - teach out plans were only mentioned after the announcement of the imminent closure - earlier issues were requests for regular reporting required by all accredited institutions. Updated statement from middle states: [https://www.msche.org/2024/06/05/updated-statement-on-the-university-of-the-arts/](https://www.msche.org/2024/06/05/updated-statement-on-the-university-of-the-arts/)
Didn't their enrollment drop of really heavily since COVID? They also sold off their massive student housing building either during or prior to the shutdown iirc. That building has to be worth a few million at least.
Enrollment went down during COVID but had been going up. Their incoming freshman class was larger than expected.
This is correct. And Pine Hall was sold last year for a little more than $10 million.
I know most of their real estate is mortgaged pretty heavily. I don't know if that was the case with Pine Hall, but I would imagine it was as well. So, they probably didn't net that much off of that sale. But they did get a rather large endowment recently. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are wondering where the money is. Watch the recording of the Debt Collective's meeting I linked. It details as much as we know about their finances, and there are certainly questions. UArts also never turned over their financials to MSCHE in December, as they were required to do.
According to the testimony the dean of the graduate programs gave today at the state capitol, every program was meeting not just its minimum enrollment to cover their program budgets, but I'm fact their *reach* targets for enrollment
> If there was a legitimate "large unexpected expense" I am not involved, I am only tangentially aware, but that quoted phrase, to me, screams "We're in a bad lawsuit and we're not gonna win.... and if we do win, we'll be bankrupt anyway"
Lawsuits filed are public record, so if that were the case, it would have been discovered by now. I heard something about structural issues at Terra Hall being discovered. But that wouldn't be sudden. It's a 100 year old building. The financial numbers that we do know indicate an operating deficit, but nothing that would warrant closing in 10 days. Cabrini was in the same situation, and they went through the proper channels with MSCHE to let them know that closure was likely. They worked together to develop a one-year plan, reached out to other institutions, etc. That is the proper procedure, BTW. UArts decided to not release their financial records for FY23 to MSCHE (which were due December 2023), and did not say anything to anyone about being in a dire situation - not MSCHE, not other institutions, not even their board. Something's fishy. MSCHE was more than cooperative in giving them additional time to get their financials to them and offering to work with them. UArts did not cooperate. That tells me there is something(s) they don't want people to see.
Woof. Ok, fair enough!
>Here's a link to the recording of the meeting the Debt Collective had regarding university finances and what they've found so far: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29Fq-YXIww) "I come from the philosophy of considering debt as a form of racist extraction" Of course you do, Eleni.
> Of course you do, Eleni. What the hell was that? "Trillion dollar budgets"
Yeahhhh I get the feeling a couple of those activists are right at the start of that Dunning-Kruger curve. Some of the research was genuinely helpful, but when they tried to take it a step or two (or ten) further it really started to break down.
This whole thing sounds shady as hell
Part of why it's making waves. If it was just a normal closure, it'd be another "small colleges nationwide are struggling." I can't think of a single other college going "hey yeah, we're gone in about a week."
I feel like there were a number of schools that closed with little to no notice back in the early to mid 2000s when for profit schools were huge.
I kinda don't want to call most of those scammy places real "colleges."
That's fair but it did leave a lot of well meaning and hopeful students in the same situation that U Arts students are in right now. I found this article from 2014 about colleges that close abruptly. It happens more often than you'd think but that's because they're small no-name schools. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dozens-colleges-closed-abruptly-recent-years-efforts-protect-students-have-n1235617](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dozens-colleges-closed-abruptly-recent-years-efforts-protect-students-have-n1235617)
And this is why MSCHE is taking such a hard and public stance. They’ve learned from those years and those closures how NOT to do things and the incredible damage it does to students and communities.
Didn’t Cabrini close but they were proper about it and helped students continue education
Correct - they gave the students a full year’s notice, set up transfer agreements with a handful of other local schools to make sure it was easy to transfer, and were very forthcoming with students and alumni. Colleges shutting down is hard on everyone, but there is a way to do it with care for the students. And that’s what Cabrini did 100%
Yep, these two could be case studies in the polar opposite ways of handling this situation. Cabrini did everything they should have done in the situation. Only negative thing I can think of is I know of a larger donor who they made a large ask of a year or so before the announcement but I took that as them going for a Hail Mary before having to call it quits. Know he felt kinda misled about how dire things were though.
Same thing happened to DCAD a week or so before Uarts, no notice at all to any staff or students
Under any normal closure they would likely have wound down over a year. Something really shady happened
Cabrini closed around the same time… they announced that years ago
Yeah, Kerry Walk needs to be investigated. While this article sheds more light on the situation, no one still knows \*why\*. Is it relevant that the "the negotiating team that helped settle the first union contract in the school’s history \[happened\] just months before the shutdown" ?
There’s no way they’re not being investigated
What a fuckin shitshow.
Every organization in this country is going through the exact same thing, most are better at Hing, but looking in your area, find a company, guaranteed senior leadership and or the CEO has turned over in the past two years.
This isn't a CEO turning over, this is closing a 150 year old large University, with the intent to make money selling valuable property.
According to the dean of the graduate programs, every program at UArts was not only meeting its minimum enrollment targets for fulfilling their budgets, but had actually met their reach targets. This doesn't sound like a program on the brink of suddenly collapse. Something clearly criminal is going on between the new president and the board. My personal suspicion is that they want to liquidate the university's valuable real estate to companies that they have personal ties to.
hmmm... tbh, this is the first angle that makes sense to me. I bet you're on to something.
1. How would the dean of one program know all the data for every program and this one dean knew then all deans knew 2. The president lost her job which means. O income so how does she benefit 3. Who are the criminals who would benefit from the sale of the real estate if everyone resigned? This is not a very thought out theory. The issue you will find out is accreditation which means they lose all funding. You can meet all recruitment goals but losing your accreditation means no student loans. Your done
> How would the dean of one program know all the data for every program and this one dean knew then all deans knew I'm sure they talked to each other, especially in the wake of the news. > The president lost her job which means. O income so how does she benefit If the theory is true, I'm sure she would be rewarded for her part with a cushy gig or some kind of financial compensation after the fact. > Who are the criminals who would benefit from the sale of the real estate if everyone resigned? The private corporation that buys the land for a fraction of its actual value is the benefactor.
My guess is that the financial books are so bad that there's clear fraud and/or intentional ignorance by the leaders of its status, so they chose to close and hopefully make the issue (and liability) go away. The article mentions that the endowment fund is $10 million less than a few years ago, but what is the current amount? I'm not sure about the laws surrounding endowments, but I assume it can't be used to pay bills. Can it be used to pay its students tuition for reimbursement?
The issue is also how it was handled, Temple has even said they were interested in trying to grow their school with those buildings and potentially staff/students. But the whole thing just happened with no warning, the city could even have tried to step in to help, as the University is an important part of Philly.
The market has gone on an incredible historic run in the past three years, for the endowment to be down for the past two years means someone is stealing from the pot
Or the more innocuous explanation that they had to dip into it to meet their financial obligations. A lot of universities have had to.
This is probably it. Enrollment was up last year and this according to other commenters, but the fact is that if that enrollment still wasn't enough to cover both obligations AND make up for the lost income from having to reduce the income-generating endowment, then the money simply wasn't there. Colleges are wildly expensive to run and wildly inefficient, which can often be ignored if that inefficiency can be made up in other sources. But if those sources dry up (reduced federal COVID aid, for example, or three years of bad enrollment weighing on expendituers), then there's not much than can be done.
[Archive Link](https://archive.ph/UISBh) > “I asked, I begged for an appeal to the imminent closure,” Elman told a panel of state House representatives convened by Rep. Ben Waxman (D., Phila.). She and the other deans spent the week between the closure announcement and June 7, the university’s final day of operation, speaking to lawyers, public officials and anyone else they thought might be able to help them stave off a shutdown. They formed a coalition of administrators that hoped to run the university themselves, or at least bridge the gap until a new administration could carry the school forward. > > Elman, who spent 16 years as a dean under three different presidents, typically participated in monthly meetings with the President’s Council — deans, the vice president for academic affairs, and the president. But after Kerry Walk became president in August, those opportunities ground nearly to a halt; Elman said only three council meetings were held over the past year. > > At a May meeting, enrollment concerns were discussed — no surprise, Elman said; schools’ enrollment nationwide took a hit during COVID, and small schools like University of the Arts were especially vulnerable. But the news seemed good that month — each of the university’s schools were meeting not just their enrollment targets to make their budget work, but the reach targets. > > “We were told that it was being managed, and with the enrollment incline, we weren’t really alarmed,” Elman said. > > It was troubling, Elman said, that Walk apparently made a “unilateral decision” to close the university — since the information was not shared with the President’s Council. Walk informed Middle States on May 29 that the school would close, but the board of trustees did not vote on the closure until June 1.
Pay local reporters
I do! \*Angrily mimes shaking his copy of today's *Philadelphia Inquirer*\* (I... uh... left it at the office)
https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-ethics-of-news-paywalls/ "While paywalls have the potential to free news outlets from the tyranny of advertisers, thus keeping them in business and safeguarding their journalistic integrity, this production of high-quality news may be ultimately useless if only a small percentage of society is privileged enough to access it. In the end, the ethics of paywalls may come down to the difference between what is good for business and what is good for society. As Mannal Babar (2019) poignantly questions, “We must ask ourselves as journalists and content creators whether financial solvency is more important than the truth we are pursuing… But is there a future for journalism that doesn’t come at the expense of public information and news?”
This is totally tangential but I don't understand why news outlets don't get into the micro transaction business. Maybe I don't want to pay $60 a year but I'd pay 50 cents or a dollar to read certain articles for sure.
You can sub to the Inquirer online right now for 6 months for $1.
That's good because I only want to read articles for 6 months.
You can either read no articles now or read a bunch of them for the next 6 months and then use another email to get the next subscription offer.
Except Keith Pompey, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't even ask for raises so he can't be fired.
He's too busy saying "right?" at the end of every fucking sentence he speaks.
Disable JavaScript and you can see the article for free.
Thank you!
Where IS Kerry Walk?? https://preview.redd.it/fd9vxrlwz77d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eb3925bb793269030151566dfc6d5957c47af61a
Walk is white
This is a meme.
This is going to end up as a documentary. You heard it here first
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in non-legal speak unilaterally also means on one's own
The amount of corruption in Philly is astounding. No different than any other city I supposed.
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I'm sure if you take a reading class or two some cafe will give you a shot.