For-profit performing arts college in New York to close

Dive Brief:

• The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts plans to close at the end of its current academic year, with operations and classes set to end Aug. 31, it announced Tuesday. 
• The for-profit arts college is currently coordinating with other institutions to help find spots for students who have not completed their programs by then. So far, it has established teach-out agreements with Five Towns College and American Academy of Dramatic Arts, both in New York. 
• NYCDA trustees decided to close after a “thorough evaluation of our enrollment and financial forecasts,” the two-year college said in an FAQ page. In explaining the closure, it cited national college enrollment trends and demographic projections.

Dive Insight:

The 45-year-old NYCDA said that the decision to close “has not been made lightly, and it comes after exhaustive efforts to explore every possible alternative.”

On the FAQ page about the wind-down, the college noted that “the landscape of higher education has meaningfully changed since the pandemic.” Its own fall enrollment fell by 8.6% to 286 students between the pre-pandemic year of 2019 and 2023, according to federal data. 

Founded in 1980 by Joan See, a successful commercial actor, the New York City institution started with a single private acting class. 

From there, it was built into a “nationally accredited college that to this day empowers actors to follow their dreams, prove the doubters wrong, and make a living doing what they love,” as the institution described itself in Tuesday’s announcement. 

Before the closure decision, NYCDA offered two-year acting programs in theater, musical theater, and film and television, and a two-year program in media production geared toward actors. It also offers shorter-term programs, including certificates. Its alumni include film and television actors, including Miles Teller, Jacob Batalon and Ashleigh Murray. 

NYCDA joins a growing list of private arts colleges to fail recently. Last year saw the sudden closure of University of the Arts in Philadelphia along with the Delaware College of Art and Design. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, meanwhile, announced it would stop offering two- and four-year degrees at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.

Those closures left holes not just in the higher education world of those regions but also in the local arts scenes, where the institutions employed working artists, hosted events and created hubs of artistic activity.