California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco will close by the end of the 2026-2027 academic year. Founded in 1907, the financially struggling nonprofit art school has entered an agreement to sell its campus to Vanderbilt University, which plans to establish undergraduate and graduate programs there, including art and design, and operate a CCA Institute that will house the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts and maintain CCA archives. The closure follows years of financial crisis, including a $20 million budget deficit in 2024 and declining enrollment, despite a $22.5 million gift from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's foundation in March 2025.
This closure matters because it marks the loss of the only nonprofit, standalone art school in San Francisco, adding to a troubling trend of art school shutdowns across the United States. CCA joins the San Francisco Art Institute (closed 2023), the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (shuttered 2024), and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (suspended degree programs) as casualties of demographic shifts, unsustainable tuition-driven models, and structural deficits. The sale to Vanderbilt preserves some educational presence but fundamentally changes the institution's independent character.