Dive Brief:
- The California College of the Arts plans to wind down after its 2026-27 academic year, ending the 120-year-old institution’s long-running effort to turn around its finances, officials announced Tuesday.
- Vanderbilt University has agreed to acquire CCA’s campus. Vanderbilt’s plans include operating a school to be dubbed the “California College of the Arts Institute at Vanderbilt,” along with offering arts programming and maintaining elements of CCA’s legacy, such as its archives and an exhibition venue.
- The arts college’s leaders ultimately realized its “tuition-driven business model is not sustainable” amid demographic declines and persistent financial deficits, CCA President David Howse said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
Over the past year, CCA has been in talks with possible partners as it recognized “lasting financial independence is out of reach given our current constraints,” Howse said.
“Throughout our conversations, Vanderbilt has been a thoughtful and responsive partner, with a team of people who clearly respect our 120-year legacy and see in it great value for future generations of students,” he added.
Howse acknowledged that the news of CCA’s closure and Vanderbilt’s takeover of the campus might evoke “shock, frustration, and disappointment” in stakeholders.
Less than a year ago, Howse trumpeted an “extraordinary milestone” for the institution after raising $45 million to fund a turnaround. That donation blitz was anchored by a $22.5 million matching gift from Jensen Huang, the billionaire founder of Taiwanese technology company Nvidia, and his wife, Lori.
But CCA was ultimately unable to raise the full amount needed to sustain itself. The year before receiving those gifts, the college’s endowment totaled just $42.6 million, most of it earmarked for student aid, according to its fiscal 2024 financials.
Anticipating the question of why the Huangs couldn’t donate more to help the college, officials said in an FAQ that while the couple has been supportive, they “understand that CCA’s existing tuition-driven financial model is not working.”
The college — the last private arts institution in the city after the San Francisco Art Institute closed in 2022 — has suffered sizable enrollment losses in recent years. Between 2019 and 2024, fall headcount dropped by roughly 30% to 1,308 students, according to federal data. That’s a problem for a college that drew just under 70% of its core revenues from tuition and fees in fiscal 2023.
Local media raised the possibility in 2024 that CCA could close or merge with another institution. By September of that year, the college laid off 10% of its staff and eliminated open roles as it tried to reduce a $20 million budget deficit.
Now it’s winding down and handing the keys over to Vanderbilt. Students on track to graduate by the end of the 2026-27 year will be able to get their degrees from the college, and CCA is working on transfer and teach-out pathways for the students who won’t be finished with their studies by then, the college said.
For its part, Vanderbilt plans to keep aspects of CCA’s legacy alive. The Nashville-based private institution will operate CCA’s Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts while maintaining the arts college’s archival materials and engaging its alumni.
CCA’s agreement with the university also “provides opportunities for both faculty and staff to apply for positions with Vanderbilt once Vanderbilt has completed an assessment of its needs,” CCA said in its FAQ.
The institutions didn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal.
The acquisition of CCA’s campus adds to Vanderbilt’s national expansion, with planned campuses in New York and Florida as well. The New York campus is set to open this fall.
The university plans to open the San Francisco branch for the 2027-28 academic year, pending regulatory approvals, Vanderbilt said. The university expects to serve around 1,000 students, both graduate and undergraduate, at the campus.
“San Francisco offers an extraordinary environment for learning at the intersection of innovation, creativity and technology, and it provides an unparalleled setting for Vanderbilt to shape the future of higher education,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said in a statement Tuesday.
CCA is one of a handful of distressed arts colleges to end operations in recent years. Perhaps the most dramatic case was the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which shuttered suddenly in 2024 — a fate that CCA managed to avoid through its fundraising and deal with Vanderbilt.
