Ah, I had assumed that my account was setup with PHP5, but it wasn’t. My host upgraded my account and the problem is gone.
I am also having this problem with 2.9 trying to install themes. I tried the solution that zeromil provided, however I think my host server doesn’t allow the direct method of connection. After reading the information in the link that stvwlf provided, I’m suspecting that my host doesn’t have the PHP-FTP thing set up correctly.
