University of the Arts students file lawsuit just hours before their school is set to close

Hours before it was set to close its doors for good, the beleaguered University of the Arts was hit with another lawsuit Thursday — this time from students who say the school breached its enrollment contracts, leaving them without degrees and short tens of thousands of dollars.

The suit — the first filed by students since the nearly 150-year-old institution’s abrupt announcement last week that it would permanently shut down on Friday — was brought on behalf of 14 plaintiffs and seeks class-action status to represent the university’s wider 1,300-member student body.

It came a day after two groups of faculty and staff separately filed their own suits against the school, alleging it failed to provide them sufficient notice that they would be imminently losing their jobs.

The mounting list of legal claims is only likely to grow in the coming weeks as students, staff, accrediting institutions, state regulators, and City Council sort through the school’s sudden, unexpected, and barely explained collapse.

“The closure of the university leaves students with great uncertainty about the future of their education and careers as well as severe financial hardship from having spent effort, time and money to attend the university and live in the Philadelphia area,” Daniel C. Levin and Nicholas J. Elia, attorneys for the students, wrote in their complaint.

University officials did not respond to requests for comment Thursday on the students’ lawsuit, continuing the silence they’ve largely maintained for days.

» READ MORE: UArts said it was closing. Here’s a day-by-day look at what’s happened since.

Most of the plaintiffs in the newest suit were pursuing master’s degrees in performance arts. Many of them specifically moved to Philadelphia to pursue their studies at University of the Arts. And nearly all were enrolled in classes at the Pig Iron School, through a nearly decade-old partnership the university forged with the Olde Kensington theater company.

Almost all, their attorneys said in court papers, had only one semester to finish before earning their degrees.

Like all of the school’s enrollees, they were caught off guard by the announcement last week of the school’s imminent closure. Most of them learned of it through reading news articles. Each one remains frustrated by the lack of explanation from university administrators about what went wrong, Levin and Elia wrote.

According to the attorneys, none of the plaintiffs has received what are known as “teach-out plans” from the school, assistance that universities that are closing are required to provide to help affected students transition to other institutions.

» READ MORE: UArts closure will be the subject of Philadelphia City Council hearings, as a Temple merger moves one step closer

Their lawsuit asks a federal judge to award them full reimbursement of all tuition they’ve paid since enrolling at University of the Arts as well as compensation for all expenses they incurred to attend the school, including money paid for textbooks, rent, moving costs, and student fees.

They’re also seeking punitive damages, alleging that University of the Arts — which was accepting applications for enrollment up until last week — deceived them by portraying itself as a financially and academically stable school.

“The consequences of the university’s poor financial position were foreseeable to university leadership,” Levin and Elia wrote. Its “lack of explanation [shows] that the university simply waited for this inevitable outcome until the last minute while failing to provide reasonable notice to students and faculty.”

The judge overseeing lawsuits against the university has not yet set a hearing in any of the cases.