The Transition

For more than 200 years, a commitment to life-long learning and high-quality arts education has been at the heart of our mission. PAFA opened its MFA program in 1991, established its BFA program in 2008, and achieved accreditation in 2013. Since then, the higher education environment changed dramatically and it continues to rapidly shift in ways that challenge our ability to adequately serve and support our students. There was not any single reason for the decision to wind down our degree-granting programs, but multiple converging trends made this choice unavoidable. Those trends include:

  • Increasing expectations from students, prospective students, and the families that college should provide a broader range of academic and professional opportunities beyond the fine arts.

  • Steadily declining enrollment, exacerbated by the pandemic.

  • Increasing requirements to operate a college and the costs. For PAFA, it is simply impossible to maintain a college–with admissions, enrollment, Title IX, student support services, and other requirements–with a student body of less than 300. Our current enrollment is about half that minimum level.

  • Colleges and universities with thousands more students and larger endowments than PAFA have experienced the same headwinds and many, including some in the Philadelphia area, have been forced to close.

  • Our commitment to our students; we believe our students deserve the highest-quality educational experience and a thriving artistic community, which PAFA will increasingly struggle to offer due to steadily declining enrollment and steadily increasing costs.

In response to these emerging trends, the Board of Trustees created the Long-term Sustainability Task Force to evaluate the future of the College and its role in the broader PAFA organization. Winding down PAFA’s degree-granting programs was the last option. Every possible action was taken to avoid that outcome, including significant outreach to potential higher education partners with whom we could collaborate to continue granting degrees. No stone was left unturned. Unfortunately, no partnership emerged, and PAFA’s leadership team and Board of Trustees determined it was no longer strategically or financially in the best long-term interests of the organization or its students to continue offering BFA and MFA degrees. The final decision was made at a special board meeting on Jan. 9, 2024.

While the higher education environment has changed so dramatically that we can no longer sustain PAFA’s degree-granting function, this difficult reality has not dulled our sense of purpose nor our drive to inspire and celebrate emerging artists and art lovers. Simply put, PAFA’s core mission to support and nurture artists has not changed. What must change are the ways in which PAFA teaches, grows, and expands opportunities for artists and creators. This arduous examination of the institution clearly revealed that although difficult, closing the College is the best path forward.