The New School of Architecture and Design’s old campus located along Park Avenue in the East Village in downtown San Diego, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
Students at the NewSchool of Architecture & Design returned to classes this spring not in the East Village warehouse for which the school has been known for decades but the former WeWork space at 600 B Street. Officials portrayed the move as a win-win because attending classes in an office setting mimics the real world and the new location is cheaper and closer to industry, with aerial views of construction downtown.
But the public messaging left out a key detail: NewSchool’s East Village landlords filed an eviction case in summer 2024, with the court ruling this spring that the college owed $2.2 million in past-due rent. The case was subsequently settled.
For years, the private for-profit business overseeing the education of architects and construction managers in San Diego has been dogged by bad press and concerns raised by accreditation bodies, primarily over falling enrollment and a revolving door for the staff.
The NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s old campus located along Park Avenue in the East Village, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
The former president and chief academic officer is also suing the college and its owners. She accused the corporate leaders of grossly misrepresenting the school’s finances and of deceiving her into taking the job, a claim the college has denied.
Ambow Education, a holding company incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in Cupertino, Calif., that bought NewSchool in 2020, didn’t respond to requests for interview or comment, nor did NewSchool leaders. But in recent interviews with the Union-Tribune, they stressed that the college has invested millions without raising tuition and broken even since 2023.
Hanging over the court cases and press coverage is a bigger question — whether the difficulties at the NewSchool are unique or part of a broader trend in the study of architecture. It is the last architectural school standing within 120 miles of San Diego after the Los Angeles-based Woodbury University closed a satellite campus in Barrio Logan last year.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education put the NewSchool on a cash monitoring list, making enrollment goals harder to hit by restricting where the college can recruit. That same year, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) issued a formal Notice of Concern, citing a significant drop in enrollment and an unusually high leadership turnover. As the Union-Tribune reported, the college had nearly 700 students in 2011 and about half that going into the pandemic.
A more recent letter from WASC, sent in 2024, gave the NewSchool credit for staff and structural changes, including “new initiatives in enrollment, marketing, and student success,” but echoed some of its previous concerns. It requested a progress report, audited financial statements and enrollment numbers. Reviewers are scheduled to visit the NewSchool again in fall 2026 to coincide with the eight-year accreditation cycle.
In the meantime, the college is pushing hard into artificial intelligence — what it calls “physical + digital” learning environments, or “phygital” for short, to chase international students. The company has boasted that its HybriU technology “bridges language and regional divides, and connects academia with industry,” and recently launched a “real-time translation platform delivering subscription-based interpreter services for global events.”
There has been speculation for years that local architects could band together to buy the NewSchool. Professor emeritus Michael Stepner, who taught at the NewSchool for 30 years, said the whispers go back at least a decade, pre-dating Ambow’s arrival.
The NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s new campus inside the We Work building along B Street in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
“There’s a whole group of us, former faculty and students, who are always concerned the school may not make it,” he said. “We all have a loyalty to the institution … from all the efforts we put into it to maintain and build it from almost nothing.”
That concern, however, intensified after another of Ambow’s schools, Bay State College, in Massachusetts, lost accreditation and closed in 2023 following allegations that students had been enrolled in classes that didn’t exist.
“We’ve had all these problems with for-profit institutions, and we were caught in that, but we never had the problems academically that others had,” Stepner said.
In its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission annual report, the company reported a net revenue loss of $3.2 million in 2023 and a net revenue gain of $300,000 in 2024. The gain, Ambow said, “was primarily driven by revenue growth from the launch of HybriU, while partially offset by the closure of Bay State College.” The company said it had enough cash on hand “for at least the next 12 months,” but warned, “Management cannot provide any assurance that we will raise additional capital if needed.”
The report also noted offhand: Because Ambow is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, it “is not subject to taxes on its income or capital gains.” Four of the five directors listed China as their primary residence.
Stepner blamed declining enrollment on industry-wide factors and noted that in the 1990s he and others aimed for 250 students. The student body grew during an era of low interest rates. Then came the pandemic.
The schooling, apprenticeship and licensing required to become an architect takes a long time, and parts of the architectural process have also been lost over the years to automation. It’s a massive investment of resources — $174,000 for a four-year bachelor’s degree — and so students are looking at other industries and degrees for financial security.
“Architecture is not a thing you make money fast in,” Stepner said.
Kotaro Nakamura, former director of SDSU’s School of Art + Design, who taught briefly at the NewSchool, described architecture as both a science and an artform. He said private schools tend to emphasize technical training over artistic spirit. Fulfilling a human need to theorize and create is harder to justify when profit is at the center of your organization.
“Money becomes the primary focus and less so on making great architects,” he said. “Having a good architectural school is a necessity to improve the living environment.”
Banking on AI comes with its own risks, and its effect on the industry is still an open question. Nakamura said practitioners believe AI will eliminate busywork and free up space to generate new ideas, but history suggests otherwise. When CAD — computer-aided design — was introduced, many thought it would make drafting easier.
The NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s new campus inside the We Work building in downtown San Diego on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
“That’s not what happened,” Nakamura said. “What happened was the client started demanding more, faster, and also the business owners, they saw that CAD would save a lot of time, so they can take more business and make more money.”
Sensing an opportunity, Palomar College recently announced a bachelor’s degree in building performance and environmental design, at a fraction of the cost of private institutions, arguing that local “students seeking a bachelor’s degree in architecture or interior design have few options.”
In court records filed as part of its eviction case, NewSchool acknowledged that losing accreditation would kill the business, because accreditation is required to receive government and military financial aid. It reported 140 full and part-time faculty and the most extensive catalogue of architectural records in San Diego.
The NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s old campus in the East Village with an aging banner out front, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
About two-thirds of the approximately 300 enrolled students at the time were “minorities” and a third received federal Pell Grants, meaning they qualify for “exceptional financial need,” the college noted in court records. Some attend night school while balancing jobs and families.
“Many of these students rely on financial assistance and would struggle to repay loans if they cannot complete their degree or if obtaining it is deferred,” attorneys wrote. Graduates of non-accredited colleges cannot sit for the Architect Registration Examination.
In her lawsuit, NewSchool’s former president and chief academic officer Gisela Loehlein accused Ambow executives of grossly misrepresenting the company’s financial stability before she left a tenured position as head of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University’s architectural department in 2021.
She alleged the promise of a high salary, monthly housing stipend and relocation costs never was fulfilled. She resigned in 2022, according to a complaint filed last year, “after months of working essentially without pay” and after becoming aware of “significant cash flow shortages and debts.”
“It soon became clear that Ambow had no plans to seriously support NewSchool, and the failure to honor plaintiff’s employment agreement was emblematic of a larger problem,” her attorneys wrote.
NewSchool vowed to defend itself against the allegations in court. Ambow’s 2024 SEC report makes no mention of Loehlein’s lawsuit in the section titled “Legal Proceedings.”
Artwork in the NewSchool of Architecture and Design’s new campus along B Street, on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Vito di Stefano)
READ NEXT