College degrees are gone. What does Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' new certificate look like?

PHILADELPHIA — When the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts announced the end of its college degrees, it promised the return of the rigorous certificate program that had turned out some of the nation’s most renowned artists.

Now, more than a year later, PAFA has fleshed out the details of its revived certificate, and the program is markedly different from the one that once formed the backbone of the school’s highly regarded artistic tradition.

Students in the new studio residency certificate program will attend PAFA for one or two years, instead of the four years typical of the certificate program’s former incarnation. Rather than following a prescribed path, each student will work with PAFA to plot out a more bespoke curriculum.

Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, PAFA’s chief academic officer, says that although she expects the new program to draw interest from recent high school students, “our market is really focused on artists and creatives who want to hone their practices” and occupy their own studio space.

“Academics is a business,” Mañjon said. PAFA conducted a study of certificate programs around the country, she said, “and what we learned is that having 30-credit units or one-year certificate programs, as opposed to three- to four-year certificate programs, are more in line with what the market can bear, both for cost and for time commitment. And so that really helped us to solidify that we’re going in the right direction.”

Not everyone is so sure.

The old certificate, which was dropped in 2017, was a “four-year intense program where each year you faced new challenges, and the knowledge and skills to which you were introduced could be used in new, sometimes unexpected ways,” said artist Bill Scott, who graduated from PAFA’s certificate program in 1978. “It was truly an academy.”

The new program, to Scott, “feels more like a workshop or seminar or a continuing education program. Nothing more.”

Others say PAFA’s change in its educational programs is a smart response to forces buffeting art schools specifically and higher education in general.

“They could have easily just closed their doors and said ‘forget it,’ and it sounds like they did their due diligence to leverage the academic assets they had in place alongside the museum and other physical infrastructure,” said Kathryn Heidemann, president and CEO of the Cleveland Institute of Art.

“PAFA is an incredible force to the city of Philadelphia, and art schools are one of those things where if they go away, you really do feel that it’s palpable in that community.”

The city’s arts community learned what such a loss feels like when, last June the University of the Arts suddenly closed its doors. The roots of that school went back nearly 150 years.

The new menu of educational options at PAFA is meant to capitalize on the school’s traditions and synergy with its museum’s three centuries of American art, while solving the financial crisis that led the school to end its college degree programs.

Founded in 1805, PAFA is the oldest art school and museum in the country, with a list of alumni that includes figures as diverse as painter Mary Cassatt and filmmaker David Lynch. But faced with a string of deficits, PAFA announced in January 2024 that it would “teach out” current college students, and then end its college degree-granting program. The MFA program began in 1993 and the BFA program in 2008. PAFA will graduate its last college students in May.

To bring in new revenue, leaders said they would attempt to rent space and art-making equipment in the Hamilton building, thus creating an “arts hub,” and launch an effort to sell the naming rights to its historic Furness & Hewitt-designed building.

The school is relatively small, like Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. But unlike Curtis, whose large endowment has helped it to remain tuition-free, PAFA’s modest endowment has it relying heavily on tuition revenue.

“We can’t just keep running deficits year after year and dipping into the endowment. That can’t work,” said Eric G. Pryor, president and CEO last year. Pryor has since left and PAFA has been operating with a three-person management team — which includes Mañjon — since his departure at the end of 2024.

The school’s new educational offerings are:

— A foundation certificate — “a very rigorous introduction to art fundamentals,” Mañjon says, aimed at high school graduates and gap-year students considering a fine arts education.

— A one- or two-year studio residency certificate for early-career and emerging artists, with areas of concentration in painting, sculpture, printmaking, and digital media.

— A postbaccalaureate, one-year graduate-level bridge program to graduate school or professional life.

PAFA will also continue a bachelor of fine arts program with the University of Pennsylvania, which has existed for decades and allows students to take courses at both schools.

Mañjon says operating costs to the institution will be lower than for the college-degree program, and the number of faculty will be reduced. In January 2024, PAFA had 21 full-time and 21 part-time faculty members. It’s not yet known how many faculty members will be tapped to teach this fall.

Student enrollment has dropped in recent years — from 270 students in 2019 to 126 in 2023. This fall, “if I get 45 students in here the first year I’ll be happy,” Mañjon said. “I think we can do that. And then you just grow from there.”

Scholarships will be available, she said, and the school was still finalizing “how financial aid will be available, whether that will be through FAFSA or whether we can provide the necessary aid directly from PAFA.”

She is encouraged by the interest so far.

“We’ve only started talking about the launching of this and we have 80 inquiries already. I’m an artist, I’m an educator, and so I believe that ‘Let’s give the market what it wants, how it wants it.’”

Bruce Samuelson, who attended PAFA and has taught there since 1969, said the new certificate program has the potential to continue the school’s role in providing a serious education in art, but much depends on the faculty and how other details play out.

“It’s really an unknown right now,” he said.

Heidemann, of the Cleveland Institute of Art, said that while “it’s disappointing to hear about the factors that led to this decision,” she applauds PAFA’s efforts at “leveraging the assets that they still have with the museum and finding a way to maintain relevance in the marketplace.”

Samuelson is willing to wait and see.

“At least it’s something,” he said. “They’re making an effort to keep that school operating after all these years.”

_____