The week that was...

Friday, May 31st, The University of the Arts announced that the 150-year-old institution is closing — and they gave students, faculty, and staff a whopping seven days’ notice. I have taught Storytelling and TV Story Analysis at UArts since 2018. This has been a disappointing week.

tl;dr — Please don’t worry about me. I taught at UArts because I genuinely enjoyed it. To me, this announcement means an extra day in my studio, and that’s hardly a punishment. But there are students, faculty, and staff at UArts who are truly suffering right now, and I ask you to keep those folks in your thoughts.

Here's a quick recap from NBC Philadelphia:

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education said it is withdrawing the university's accreditation. The withdrawal goes into effect this Saturday.

UArts said that it will not be enrolling a new class in the fall. In a statement, the university explained that it will work with current students to transfer to partnering schools like Temple University, Drexel University and others.

Schools that lose their accreditation have the right to appeal the action, but the commission says that earlier this week it was notified by UArts that the school is anticipating to close on Saturday.

The commission says that it requested what it calls a "supplemental information report" that was due on Wednesday at noon. It also requested a teach-out plan by June 7, 2024, that would give students a fair chance to finish their education.

Here's my understanding of what went down. UArts indicated to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) that it was planning on closing — in a little over seven days. A federal regulation called the WARN Act requires employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of a covered-business closing and covered-business mass layoff. Furthermore, MSCHE requires a "teach-out plan" to protect students in such a closure. When MSCHE asked for a teach-out plan, UArts went ¯\(ツ)/¯

As a result, MSCHE yanked UArts' accreditation effective immediately. When they did that, they made a public announcement. That is how we found out UArts was closing.

A couple of hours later, UArts made a formal announcement. It was closing in seven days. The final acceptance day for college admissions was June 1st (a Saturday). That means many (if not all) of the incoming Freshman class (a) lost the deposits they put down on UArts and (b) lost any hope of regaining financial aid from institutions they'd rejected in favor of UArts. The other existing students are scrambling to put together a plan for this Fall — including finding a new school, transferring credits, negotiating financial aid, and a few dozen other incidental headaches.

Me, I'm fine. I taught there because I genuinely enjoyed it. I liked helping young people learn how to manage and wield their creativity effectively. I loved the challenge of connecting with them intellectually. And every semester I had a fresh, new crop of victims to foist my dad jokes upon. Don't get me wrong, I liked the paycheck, too. However, this basically means I will have an extra day in my studio to work on projects for you guys, and that's hardly a punishment!

But those students are screwed. The entire staff lost their jobs with less than a week to prepare. Many of the full-time faculty members relied on UArts for their main income — not to mention health insurance — and now that's gone. The adjuncts, who are used to scrambling to assemble a living wage teaching a few classes at a handful of institutions, are scrambling twice as hard to make that happen. For many, it's not very sunny in Philadelphia right now.