California College of the Arts to Close in 2027
38Jan. 15, 2026
San Francisco’sCalifornia College of the Artsannounced on January 13 that it will “wind down” its operations and shutter permanently at the end of the 2026–27 school year. CCA is the last accredited nonprofit art and design school in Northern California, following thedemiseof the San Francisco Art Institute in 2023. After it closes, the school’s campus will be taken over by Nashville’s Vanderbilt College, which will use it as a West Coast outpost for undergrad and graduate studies.
Established in 1907 as the School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts, CCA moved to Oakland in 1922 and opened a second campus in San Francisco in 1996, closing the Oakland outpost in 2022. Like many higher-learning institutions across the country, the school struggled in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. Facing a $20 million budget shortfall in 2024, CCAtoyed with the ideas of layoffs and mergers, even as it neared completion on a $123 million expansion consolidating its San Francisco and Oakland campuses and giving it 90,000 square feet of new studio and classroom space. In March 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s foundation donated $22.5 million in matching funds to the school, which had raised the same amount from private donors. It was not enough to keep the school afloat.
“It is important to be clear about the reality we face,” wrote CCA president David Howse in a January 13 letter to the college community. “With declining enrollment, CCA’s tuition-driven business model is not sustainable. Demographic shifts and a persistent structural deficit remain significant burdens on our ability to sustain current programs or grow new ones.”
Howse said that Vanderbilt would establish its own art and design programs at the former CCA campus. “Vanderbilt also plans to operate a CCA Institute at Vanderbilt which will include, among other things, the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, will maintain CCA archival materials, and will serve as a vehicle for CCA alumni engagement,” he said. “Through these activities, Vanderbilt will honor CCA’s longstanding creative mission and maintain a strong presence for art and design education in the Bay Area.”
The news was well received by city officials amid the struggle to revitalize San Francisco’s downtown core, which saw numerous businesses exit amid the pandemic.
“My one reaction when I got the news was ‘What a phenomenal save,’” City Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district encompasses CCA, told San Francisco radio station KQED. “I think this could have been really different had Vanderbilt not been in the picture.”