Students outraged after two Bay Area colleges announce their closing.
Argosy University in Alameda and the Art Institute of California in San Francisco will shut their doors in December, leaving some students scrambling to figure out how to finish their degrees.
Students have a few options, but some of them tell KRON4 none of the options really work for their situation.
KRON4 is told there are a lot of veterans that attend the Art Institute of California. A few of them said they will not be able to complete their degree before the school closes in December.
“You know, I came up here after doing the military, was going to get my degree, and now, I’m wondering, you know, what’s the best course of action,” veteran student Trey Young said. “I’ve heard from other veterans that it’s possible since the school is closing for me to just say, school is closing. The VA will like refund the time they spent, so basically, I can go to another school, but that’s basically starting over again.”
The options the school is giving students is to transfer to another campus in Seattle, Hollywood, San Diego, or somewhere else in the country for 50 percent of the tuition.
They will get $5,000 to go to another school, which isn’t an option for some people because they say a lot of the credits aren’t transferable and there is a limited number of credits some schools will take from transfers.
The third option is online classes. But the veterans KRON4 talked with say the GI bill doesn’t cover online classes.
And they just don’t have the option to just get up and move their lives to another campus.
“The vets, we all, our medical doctors are here,” veteran student Tobias Goodliffe said. “Everything is here, you know. And they don’t have anything in place for us, and they don’t have anything but to say, but we will give you $5,000 at the end of the quarter. That doesn’t help. They’re acting like we can move or do something on that. And there’s absolutely nothing. The way I look at it is that they have screwed the vets. Any vet that’s not going to be able to graduate before they close these doors, we got screwed out of our entitlement.”
Argosy University in Alameda is also closing in December. Students are dealing with some of the same issues there.
The schools say they have to close because of declining enrollment and the trend towards online classes.
There are a lot of people that are also going to lose their jobs because of the closings.
More than 200 school employees will be laid off.