By Bloomberg
Publication Date: 2026-01-14 16:21:00
By Felipe Marques, Bloomberg
Vanderbilt University is opening a new campus in San Francisco, taking over a cash-strapped arts college that Jensen Huang gave millions of dollars in an attempted rescue last year.
Vanderbilt will acquire the California College of the Arts campus in the city’s downtown, as the roughly 120-year-old school winds down its operations by 2027, according to a release.
“San Francisco offers an extraordinary environment for learning at the intersection of innovation, creativity and technology, and it provides an unparalleled setting for Vanderbilt to shape the future of higher education,” Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said.
The 1,300-student California College of Arts had previously laid off 10% of its staff and instituted a series of budget cuts, illustrating the economic pressures facing small schools that are dealing with increasingly dire finances. As the last-remaining private art and design school in the Bay Area, the college’s leadership said its tuition-driven business model is not sustainable.
The school has been teetering for years. Last February it received a $22.5 million lifeline from billionaire Huang, Nvidia Corp.’ top executive, and his wife Lori and had previously gotten a $20 million grant from the state. Those measures allowed the school to avoid “a financial crisis and earn us time to plan more effectively for the future,” David Howse, the president of the California College of the Arts, said in a…
