Bryant Fleming was looking forward to the fall semester at the University of the Arts, where the rising senior was to choreograph a production of “Sister Act" — the same musical comedy that led him to fall in love with theater in high school. Instead, the musical theater major was left heartbroken and angry over the Philadelphia school's Friday that it planned to close its doors in just seven days. The shocked students, parents and faculty alike and raised questions about governance at the venerable city institution.
University officials have not said how or why they suddenly ran out of money to pay the bills. “You all knew what was going on, so why didn't you tell us and be up front with us and actually allow us to prepare?” Fleming said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We're all angry.
...
It just hurts." Fleming, who plans to enroll at nearby Temple University, was among hundreds of people who gathered outside of the university’s administration building this week to protest the closure, which is scheduled for Friday. The University of the Arts, which traces its roots back nearly 150 years, has produced several Grammy- and Tony-award winning artists.
It joins a long list of small, private colleges that have shut down in recent years amid demographic changes and pandemic turmoil. Summer classes were canceled, and a new class of first-year students, many of whom had just sent in their deposits, had to scramble to find somewhere else to enroll. Philadelphia’s Tem.
