Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to eliminate its degree programs

America’s oldest museum and art school is closing its college. In a departure from Philadelphia’s long tradition of visual arts training, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, billed as the country’s oldest institution that is both a museum and school, is winding down its degree-granting programs, leaders said on Wednesday.

The Academy — founded in 1805, and which counts Mary Cassatt, Maxfield Parrish, David Lynch, and Barkley L. Hendricks among its alumni — will keep its museum open and fully operating. It plans to carry on classes in continuing education and its K-12 arts programs.

At the same time, PAFA intends to restore its comprehensive three- or four-year certificate program and relaunch it this fall. The program, from which many artists graduated over a period of decades, was dropped in 2017.

However, PAFA’s educational core of recent years — its bachelor’s and master’s degree programs — will be shuttered at the end of the 2024-25 school year, school officials said.

The decision was made official Tuesday with a unanimous vote of the PAFA board. The school is on North Broad street, two blocks north of City Hall.

Eric G. Pryor, who took over as PAFA’s president two years ago after a period of considerable turmoil at the school, called the move “painful,” but said that after examining the options over several years, he was confident that it was necessary.

“This is something where we’ve been very deliberate about, looking at our options, and we made certain that we exhausted them and really took our time,” said Pryor. “Just burying our heads in the sand and hoping that things would change I just think wasn’t an option.”

PAFA is currently running a $3 million annual deficit, and closing its degree programs is expected to save a little more than $1 million. It will open up some space in the school’s Hamilton building, which PAFA hopes to rent out, bringing in some new revenue. Leaders hope that those two changes along with some others will close the budget gap.

“We expect to be into the black, if not well into the black, by fiscal year 2028,” said Anne E. McCollum, chair of PAFA’s board.

PAFA has raised tens of millions of dollars in recent years for building renovations, but Pryor said it didn’t make sense to raise funds to save the degree programs because of a trend playing out at the school over the last several years: a shrinking student body.

Enrollment has dropped by half — from 270 students in 2019 to 126 in 2023 — while costs have increased, according to figures provided by school officials. In fiscal year 2023, the school incurred a loss of $7,090 per student, compared with fiscal year 2017, when it showed a gain of $6,322 per student.

» READ MORE: From Cassatt and Eakins, to Tanner and David Lynch: Here are some famous PAFA graduates

“Over the past few years, the leadership has been looking at this enrollment cliff,” said Pryor, “and we didn’t see them necessarily rebounding after COVID. There was just no economy of scale. And it was making it much more challenging to make certain that we were able to offer all the things necessary for students to have a positive experience.”

PAFA explored a possible merger with other area art schools, Pryor said, though none of the discussions panned out.

Outside the school on Wednesday afternoon, students were angry, especially over how and when the news was communicated. Tuition payments were due Wednesday and classes begin Thursday.

”I feel like I just got here and I’m really confused about where I’m supposed to go. I got a full ride scholarship and I haven’t gotten any answers on what’s going to happen yet. It’s all very new and it’s all very scary,” said first-year student Aubrie Testa, 18, who grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and studies printmaking.

News of the elimination of the school’s degree programs was being shared with students Wednesday afternoon. Juniors, seniors, and MFA students expecting to graduate from PAFA in 2024 or 2025 will still be able to do so, the school said.

Freshmen and sophomores will have to enroll elsewhere at the end of the current academic year. PAFA said it has 37 such students.

“We will create personalized transfer plans to a range of local and well-regarded schools with whom we have made agreements so that students can complete their arts degrees with minimal disruption,” Pryor wrote in a statement addressed to members of the PAFA community.

Agreements are in place with the University of the Arts, Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Moore College of Art & Design, Arcadia University, and Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, his statement said.

PAFA currently has 21 full-time and 21 part-time faculty members, a spokesperson said, and although they will be retained for now, no firm plan exists yet for their employment after the degree programs are phased out. The number of faculty who will be retained will depend on how many students enroll in the restored certificate program, Pryor said.

While the end of the degree programs drew criticism and condemnation on social media, it struck others in the PAFA orbit as potentially a return to the school’s roots.

Jan Baltzell, who taught in both the certificate and graduate programs for 30 years before retiring in 2020, said she thought that PAFA’s focus on a studio-based education is what made it unique and that the degree programs diluted that.

“The issue a lot of times is the fact that parents have a hard time spending money and not getting a degree,” said Baltzell. “I hope this will help the school, not hinder it — but it may take a little time.”

The change in the school’s program was applauded by Philadelphia’s chief cultural officer and director of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy.

“As the first art school and museum in the country, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts plays an important role in the development of future artists and art enthusiasts. PAFA’s announcement today that they are winding down their degree granting programs will not change this,” Kelly Lee wrote in an email. “The city will continue to benefit as PAFA works to become a cultural hub for all Philadelphians.”

Art training has been part of PAFA’s mission since its founding at 10th and Chestnut Streets at the beginning of the 19th century, but it was Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins who formalized the school’s educational program in the 1880s with a “sequentially organized program of elementary and advanced courses outlined in a printed catalog,” according to a PAFA history. A small tuition was introduced.

In 1929, PAFA began offering a bachelor’s degree in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. In 1991, PAFA opened its graduate school, offering a master of fine arts degree, and, in 2008, it launched a bachelor of fine arts degree program separate from the one offered with Penn.

The joint program with Penn will continue, said McCollum.

As the changes at PAFA play out over the next year and a half, McCollum said, the institution is “deeply committed to our faculty, our staff, and our students and we will do right by them in whatever way that we can, whether it’s making their last year at PAFA a banner year or making sure that all of the staff members and faculty who aren’t going to be with us have the best in counseling to seek a new position and have generous severance. That’s where our commitment is. That is core to the heart of this institution.”