Students were left scrambling after The Art Institute announced it would be closing its doors for good.
The Art Institute of Virginia Beach, along with all of the other campuses in the Art Institute system, will close permanently on September 30.
Justice Perez Sanders, a graphic design student at the college, was accepted when she was 15 years old.
Now at age 16, she said she thought the email announcing the school’s closure was a hoax until she started making some calls.
“So, I went ahead and called my enrollment counselor cause I’m pretty close with her, and it said that the line didn’t exist anymore — the line was disconnected,” Justice said. “So, then I tried calling my financial — line disconnected. Then we tried calling a lot of other people who I knew there — line disconnected.”
According to an email the school sent to students, a culmination of events over the past decade, both external and internal to the campus operations, has forced the closure of this system of colleges. The college states that legacy challenges that occurred under previous ownership have ultimately led to its closure. Additionally, the school cited its inability to absorb the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as a major reason why it’s closing its doors.
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