How Much Is Tuition for the Art Institute of Charleston

The rise and autumn of the Art Found of Charleston took just eleven years, carrying with it the aspirations of hundreds of young artists — and leaving some of them struggling below a mount of debt.

The for-profit concatenation of colleges opened its Market place Street location in Apr 2007 amid fanfare from local political leaders, including then-Mayor Joe Riley, who had invited the school to railroad train workers for the hospitality and eatery industries.

But today, as the Art Found of Charleston's new owners prepare to cut their financial losses and shutter the campus at the end of 2018, even the college'south founding president senses that something went amiss.

"I've always thought nigh writing a book, and the title would exist 'How Greedy Capitalism Ruined the For-Profit Higher Education Sector,'" said Rick Jerue, who served as the Fine art Institute of Charleston's president from 2007 to 2013. "Yous know, didactics, it'south a production, I'll admit that, just all products aren't as profitable every bit other products, and instruction has a mission mode beyond simply the bottom line. And I think some of the corporate leaders lost sight of that."

Some current and former students say they received a quality education from knowledgeable instructors at the Art Institute merely that the school's aggressive recruiting methods and sky-high tuition seemed designed to clasp them for federal financial aid and private loan money.

The U.South. Department of Education has occasionally cracked down on for-profit colleges that saddle students with insurmountable debt while siphoning millions of dollars of federal assist to private investors. The nationwide concatenation of ITT Technical Institutes closed all its campuses in September 2016, nigh 2 weeks later on the government cut off its pipeline of financial aid money.

The Art Institute's critics say the school was operating under a similar business model. The Charleston schoolhouse is a branch of the Art Institute of Atlanta, where Department of Pedagogy records show virtually seventy percent of annual revenues came from federal financial aid. (Ane estimate placed the effigy closer to 85 percent every bit of 2014, with Veterans Affairs funding included).

In return for that outlay of public money — totaling $5.8 meg at the Charleston location in the 2015-16 school year alone — but half of students returned to the Art Institute of Charleston afterwards their first year. I-third of students graduated within six years, according to the Department of Education's College Scorecard.

Students graduated with a median of $29,700 in federal debt — not including private loans — and only 27 percent had paid a single dollar toward that debt three years after leaving the schoolhouse.

Officials at the Art Constitute of Charleston have been referring all interview requests to Anne Dean, a spokeswoman for school owner Dream Centre Didactics Holdings LLC. Dean has not returned more than eight phone calls in the past iii weeks. In a prepared email statement on July 11, Dean said multiple campuses were endmost due to declining enrollment and increased demand for online programs.

Dusty Rose Smith talks almost the closing of the Art Plant of Charleston before the stop of the year. Brad Nettles/Staff

On the outs

Looking back, students and industry leaders saw signs in contempo years that the Art Institute was on the fashion out. Once an active participant in events similar the Wine + Food Festival and Charleston Fashion Calendar week, the schoolhouse's public contour began to diminish as enrollment declined and the school made cuts to its educational activity faculty.

Current students find themselves in a tight spot. Dusty Rose Smith, a fashion design major originally from Alabama, said her first two quarters at the Art Institute cost virtually $25,000, including digital textbooks and sewing materials — and her family took out loans to cover the expense.

When the news broke the school was shutting down, she began calling other fashion blueprint schools to ask about transferring — just as presently as she mentioned the Fine art Institute, they all said they wouldn't accept any of her transfer credits.

"I lost this total semester, I'll lose the next semester, and then I'll have to retake classes," Smith said.

Erin Fitzgerald said she knew the Art Plant of Charleston would be expensive when she enrolled in 2012 — but at age 17, she might not have fabricated the wisest economic decision.

Still, she said she thrived in the accelerated available'due south degree program in graphic design, knocking courses out on a fast-moving quarterly schedule. Plus, she loved her instructors, who were all working in the industry and helped her state a graphic pattern task within a week later on graduation.

When she heard the news of the schoolhouse'due south impending closure in July, she was saddened but not surprised to see her quondam professors out of a job.

Mickey Bakst wasn't lamentable to hear the Art Constitute was leaving his metropolis. The gregarious general manager of Charleston Grill said he saw a few Art Institute culinary grads come up to work at the restaurant over the years but at least two had to quit and motility in with their parents, haunted by loans they couldn't hope to pay back.

"I mean, kids were coming out with $90,000 worth of debt. In an industry that'due south paying $fifteen for line cooks, that'southward really hard to manage," Bakst said.

An expensive flop

Rick Jerue, founding president of the Fine art Institute of Charleston. File/Wade Spees Staff

Wade Spees

Jerue said he stepped downward as president of the Art Institute of Charleston afterward watching its parent company, Education Management Corp., restrict the school'southward autonomy, scale back student-centered programs like career placement services, and reinvest its money into marketing and recruiting efforts.

Jerue isn't lone in that assessment. The Harvard Police Schoolhouse'due south Project on Predatory Student Lending has been documenting the travails of Art Institute students effectually the state for years, and the activist grouping Debt Collective has begun advising students non to sign whatsoever paperwork handed out by Art Plant administrators.

Some students at closing colleges can take their federal student loan debts canceled through the Section of Educational activity'southward Closed School Discharge programme. But Debt Commonage co-founder Thomas Gokey said officials at Art Institute campuses across the country accept been pressuring students to sign their rights away by transferring to a surviving Art Institute location or online programme.

Gokey said he is still trying to understand the latest developments at the Art Institute. Education Management Corp., itself in one case co-owned by the financial titan Goldman Sachs, decided to sell most of its Fine art Institute, Argosy University and South University backdrop to an unlikely heir-apparent in 2017: a nonprofit subsidiary of the Los Angeles-based Dream Middle Foundation, a Pentecostal ministry that serves homeless and drug-addicted populations. The sale reportedly cost $60 million.

Pedagogy Management declared defalcation June 29. Dream Centre Educational activity Holdings LLC began shutting downwardly schools, including 18 Art Institute campuses, around the same time.

"It was partly a PR stunt — 'We're no longer these greedy for-profit schools, we're nonprofit.' But these are nonprofit front groups that are channeling a tremendous amount of money off of these schools," Gokey said.

Baking and pastry students Megan Scharett (left) and Muireann Starnes prepare desserts in the kitchens of the Culinary Institute of Charleston, Trident Technical Higher's cooking plan. Provided/Trident Technical College

Another option

At least in the culinary arts, aspiring students in the Charleston area had another choice all along — and a much cheaper i. Trident Technical College has been offering culinary courses since the late-'80s, revamping its offerings with the creation of its Culinary Institute of Charleston in 2005.

For residents of the tri-county expanse, fall tuition for a full class load at Trident is merely $two,200 — and many students can knock the price downward to less than $ane,200 with state tuition help from the S.C. Education Lottery.

In the week after the Art Institute announced it was pulling the plug, at least six culinary students from the school practical to Trident's program, co-ordinate to Culinary Establish of Charleston Dean Mike Saboe.

One of those students was Sierra Hodge. She said an instructor there gave her a tour for more than one hour when she stopped by the public technical schoolhouse's main campus in North Charleston last week.

Originally slated to brainstorm classes July 9 at the Art Institute, she was stunned by the terminal-minute announcement on July ii that the school would no longer enroll new students.

Hodge was packing the family car to motility to Charleston when she heard the news. She quit packing and broke downwards crying outside her parents' firm in Hickory, N.C.

Susanne Hodge held her daughter and seethed.

"She's been planning this all twelvemonth, knowing her life was on rail — and then in 10 minutes, everything brutal apart," Susanne said.

Sierra is a planner. She started touring colleges during her 10th-grade year and received an early credence to the Fine art Plant's culinary arts program in September 2017. The school didn't require Sat scores or two foreign linguistic communication credits, so she skipped both — a decision that came dorsum to haunt her this summer as she scrambled to observe some other college that would allow her enroll.

"It's been a hot mess," Sierra said.

Achieve Paul Bowers at 843-937-5546. Follow him on Twitter @paul_bowers.

breedloveforiz1989.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/students-left-dangling-as-art-institute-of-charleston-shuts-down/article_3a2bbb52-89e6-11e8-bd5d-2f7b26deb520.html

Share this post