Staff at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising are preparing for layoffs in June after a deal to sell the school dissolved earlier this month.
FIDM said it will lay off 95 employees, with the downtown Los Angeles school’s notification to the state citing “business conditions” for the cuts. The school said the layoffs are effective June 17 and include 44 instructors, in addition to positions in human resources, finance, operations, financial aid, student housing and other departments.
FIDM did not respond to a request for comment on the layoffs.
The layoffs follow news this month that plans to sell FIDM to France-based Skema Business School fell apart. Skema said in an update on the deal it backed out on a purchase “because several material conditions have not been met.”
The two parties began exclusive negotiations in September for FIDM’s creative business and management programs, which were estimated to have about 1,000 students at the time. The programs would have been renamed Skema Business School L.A. and given Skema a footprint on the West Coast. The deal was originally expected to close early this year.
Revenue Pursuit
FIDM’s fashion programs, which were separate from the Skema negotiations, merged with Arizona State University last year to create ASU FIDM.
The ASU deal was seen as a way to drive revenue into the struggling school, which was on the verge of losing its Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) accreditation last year.
“The institution needs aggressively to pursue additional revenue sources to assure its long-term financial viability,” the WSCUC said in a letter last March to FIDM founder and President Tonian Hohberg.
News of the layoffs comes after FIDM informed the state in November of 322 layoffs as a result of the expected Skema acquisition. The school said at the time, it was likely several of those positions would transfer over to the new ownership once the deal closed.
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