Dive Temporary:
- For-profit Metropolis School, in Florida, is transferring to shut completely, the establishment introduced late this week in a transfer that reportedly shocked college students. The faculty didn’t disclose the rationale for its resolution.
- The faculty — which focuses totally on healthcare profession packages — plans to cease enrolling new college students beginning with the autumn time period and can train out its present college students.
- Metropolis School joins a handful of different career-focused establishments which have closed in latest months amid enrollment declines and different pressures bearing down on the upper ed sector.
Dive Perception:
Metropolis School’s announcement adopted native media experiences of the establishment’s pending closure. In response to a South Florida NBC affiliate, the choice got here as a shock to college students, who struggled to get info.
“All of the sudden being knowledgeable three days in the past that the establishment is closing down, it was surprising, everybody was blindsided by this,” one scholar informed the station.
One other station, Native 10, which first reported on the closure on Wednesday, was ejected from the faculty’s property by an worker because the crew was attempting to assemble details about the closure.
Metropolis School officers didn’t reply to Larger Ed Dive’s requests for extra details about why it’s closing. Messages to greater than a dozen school employees and college members additionally went unreturned.
Metropolis School opened its first location in 1984 in Fort Lauderdale. By 2017, it gained accreditation from the Accrediting Bureau of Well being Training Colleges and had grown to incorporate 5 Florida areas plus an internet division.
Its web site at present lists simply two areas, in Altamonte Springs and Hollywood. Its areas in Gainesville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami have closed completely, based on Google and Yelp enterprise critiques.
In fall 2022, Metropolis School’s Hollywood location enrolled 257 college students — which was roughly flat in comparison with 5 years prior — and its Altamonte Springs location had 152 college students, down from 189 in 2017.
Because it closes its remaining campuses, the faculty stated it should help college students in graduating or proceed their research elsewhere and “will define a transparent pathway for them to earn their levels.” It additionally stated the transition could be guided by a proper teach-out plan.
The faculty added it might proceed to offer help companies, together with advising, tutoring, switch help and placement companies.
“Metropolis School understands the impression of this resolution and has at all times prided itself on its dedication to its scholar physique: one which we have now each intention of sustaining by way of all steps of the teach-out part,” the faculty stated in its web site discover.
Metropolis School is one among a number of career-oriented establishments to shutter in latest months, together with for-profits Northwestern School in Illinois, North Coast School in Ohio, Mountain State School in West Virginia, and Triangle Tech in Pennsylvania, in addition to the personal nonprofit Pittsburgh Technical School.
