PASSHE Institutions Merging

[Fightingscot82]

As I predicted, the vote passed unanimously. BOG chair from Fox Chapel and BOG member from Guys Mills both appeared pretty proud of themselves.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

I have reason to believe that the press coverage of the enrollment losses at Edinboro & Clarion have contributed to their decline. You never hear about the major enrollment losses at the outlet shops. Westminster and Thiel are teetering on collapse after similar enrollment losses. Maybe only Wheeling gets the negative coverage because it ties into the church?

Buried in the consolidation report is the fact that Duquesne has the highest average student debt of any 4-year school in Pennsylvania.

I find Duquesne to be kind of unique around the Yinzer lands. It still has a status -- and its alumni basically refer to it as an Ivy League school. I've found in my working career Duquesne people have a bigger ego than just about anybody else around.

[Fightingscot82]

Not to mention recruiting may get a little dirty between schools. I can already hear IUP and SRU telling prospective students to choose them over the unknown mess of these triads.

I have reason to believe that the press coverage of the enrollment losses at Edinboro & Clarion have contributed to their decline. You never hear about the major enrollment losses at the outlet shops. Westminster and Thiel are teetering on collapse after similar enrollment losses. Maybe only Wheeling gets the negative coverage because it ties into the church?

Buried in the consolidation report is the fact that Duquesne has the highest average student debt of any 4-year school in Pennsylvania.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

I have a hard time believing that. And really, that's super modest either way. Its also a losing proposition, because most PASSHE students don't choose their school specifically for the program. Also, PASSHE takes way too long to create a new degree program. Third, PASSHE requires way too much general education and that's no longer attractive to post-recession students who question what they're paying for and see college as more vocational than foundational. Private schools will seize on this, quickly hammer out a program that has fewer gen eds/more major-specific courses, and at a cost close enough to PASSHE. This recently happened with several PASSHE schools going for fermentation & brewing programs. PASSHE moves like a cruise ship while privates are more nimble like one of those party catamarans in Cozumel.

Not to mention recruiting may get a little dirty between schools. I can already hear IUP and SRU telling prospective students to choose them over the unknown mess of these triads.

[Fightingscot82]

So 1% enrollment gain in NE. 2% in West. Projections.

They're claiming it's based on new program creation.

I have a hard time believing that. And really, that's super modest either way. Its also a losing proposition, because most PASSHE students don't choose their school specifically for the program. Also, PASSHE takes way too long to create a new degree program. Third, PASSHE requires way too much general education and that's no longer attractive to post-recession students who question what they're paying for and see college as more vocational than foundational. Private schools will seize on this, quickly hammer out a program that has fewer gen eds/more major-specific courses, and at a cost close enough to PASSHE. This recently happened with several PASSHE schools going for fermentation & brewing programs. PASSHE moves like a cruise ship while privates are more nimble like one of those party catamarans in Cozumel.

[complaint_hopeful]

So 1% enrollment gain in NE. 2% in West. Projections.

They're claiming it's based on new program creation.

[Fightingscot82]

Interesting, some departments of staff at these schools are managers and the same department at other schools has a mixture of managers and staff. It's going to be interesting how that plays out.

General rule of thumb is that on the administration side Director title and above (Deans, VPs, etc) are "managers". Lower level administrative professionals with titles like assistant/associate director, coordinator, and student services folks like financial aid, admissions, student life are all in a PASSHE-specific union called SCUPA.

Classifications are really strange in PASSHE. Counseling/psych therapists and most full-time academic advisors are included with faculty. Department chairs are still faculty but with a reduced teaching load in exchange for the administrative work. The only non-union faculty are the adjunct/freelance part-timers or temporary full-time. Job is dictated by the union agreement but they can't join.

Police officers have their own union. Clerical/support staff have their own union. Hourly custodial & maintenance staff have a union too. When I worked at a public university in Ohio, there were no unions on campus. When I worked at a private university, professors and police were the only unions. United Steelworkers eventually unionized the adjunct/freelance faculty. Everyone else was at-will and reminded of it frequently.

https://www.passhe.edu/inside/HR/LR/Pages/default.aspx

[complaint_hopeful]

Wow - Even with the optimistic enrollment numbers, it's going to take the West well into the future to break even.

IF they have an enrollment loss early on from the Integration, this could get bad.

[complaint_hopeful]

Union contracts also dictate layoffs go by seniority. Even after constant retirement incentives, they're still going to lay off the younger, lesser paid faculty instead of somehow focusing on need or performance. A professor I had at Edinboro has been there since 2003 and was laid off. 17 years in (halfway to retirement) and still considered low seniority.

Interesting, some departments of staff at these schools are managers and the same department at other schools has a mixture of managers and staff. It's going to be interesting how that plays out.

[complaint_hopeful]

I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. The schools exist to provide a college education at a low cost to students. A *huge* secondary benefit is for the communities with an influx of well-paying jobs. Its not the reason to oppose the plan but it absolutely has to be mentioned. There's a big ripple effect when you lose these jobs: people leave and aren't replaced, houses go unsold and bring down the value of remaining homes, people meaning means school population drops and in turn state funding drops, churches lose people and lose money, etc. This rationale is why the state refuses to close the few remaining state hospitals or consolidate prisons.

Job losses were coming whether through the redesign or not. The whole mandate to get things down to the 2010 staffing levels called for that. And it applies to schools outside the Triads.

I think I saw in one article that IUP might lose up to 400 employees. The community will DEFINATELY feel that.

I think the only way to avoid that would be for the state to give PASSHE higher funding.

[Fightingscot82]

Yep. And now they're just trying to put a pretty bow on it in a presentation. I hope they go over how they project enrollment increases, etc.

The problem with the attrition thing is it weakens depts. Like say an employee leaves in Dept A, they typically don't refill the position. Then the others absorb the work. At a certain point, quality falls. Some schools have done this for years. You can only cut so much. They'd likely be better assessing positions they don't need.

The kicker is, they want to cut all these employees AND grow. I don't see how that will be possible. You need a certain amount of faculty and staff to support growth.

Plus, I'd imagine some of the better employees will leave.

Union contracts also dictate layoffs go by seniority. Even after constant retirement incentives, they're still going to lay off the younger, lesser paid faculty instead of somehow focusing on need or performance. A professor I had at Edinboro has been there since 2003 and was laid off. 17 years in (halfway to retirement) and still considered low seniority.

[Fightingscot82]

I'm convinced that there was no other path considered other than significant staff reductions, Greenstein's job was to come up with a way to do that that didn't look quite as harsh. At IUP I'd guess that retirements reduced the projected layoffs by about half. How it works in the future depends on future enrollments. Whether the merged cshools have that much buffer with older faculty , I don't know.

In the end they could have gone with pay cuts, more creative financing of the overbuilt Dorms, including state funding/backstops, etc, more state funding for students attending the PASSHE but there really is not the will to fix it in a sustainable way. There is a never ending supply of academics that think they can fix such problems with rearranging the deck chairs, and enjoy immensely the meetings and planning that goes with such rearrangements. By merging though, they can greatly reduce some schools without "closing" them but of course for all practical purposes, the schools exists in name only .

Greenstein is a wonk. He talks about higher ed but has never really done the work. He's friends with other higher ed wonks like Jeff Selingo. I think that he realized the only path forward was to tirelessly fight the legislature for more funding or cut & consolidate. One is a lot easier than the other, which is why he packaged it as the "only" solution.

My fear is that the plan doesn't lower the direct cost to students, so if a student is mobile why attend? If a student isn't mobile and lives in a rural area, there's a decent chance that their internet isn't fast enough to handle online education. So the consolidated schools will be less attractive, further boosting Slippery Rock and West Chester with mobile students. Immobile students (including those who can't afford to live out of home) are lost. Or at best they go further into debt to live on somewhere or attend a local private or flagship outlet store (counter to the mission of PASSHE). Looking for the source but a higher ed researcher I follow said nationally just 5-7% of fully online undergraduate students are "traditional" age of 18-25 and most are deployed military.

I'd LOVE to be wrong. This plan is untested and has a lot of glaring question marks.

[Fightingscot82]

Thank goodness you said that, because this guy's post from several months ago made PASSHE practically sound like a jobs program.

I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. The schools exist to provide a college education at a low cost to students. A *huge* secondary benefit is for the communities with an influx of well-paying jobs. Its not the reason to oppose the plan but it absolutely has to be mentioned. There's a big ripple effect when you lose these jobs: people leave and aren't replaced, houses go unsold and bring down the value of remaining homes, people meaning means school population drops and in turn state funding drops, churches lose people and lose money, etc. This rationale is why the state refuses to close the few remaining state hospitals or consolidate prisons.

[Bart]

3 of the 6 I would say could fail soon without steps. Mansfield already had to borrow money.

If you get 3 schools having to borrow money from passhe, the system could fail.

But, most Penn State campuses lose money and the main campus sustains them...so I don't know. Maybe passhe needs to look at this different as opposed to having them all profitable.

Sometimes a surgeon has to cut out parts, so that the healthy parts don't become diseased. PASSHE is trying to treat the problem, but may end up killing the patient.

[complaint_hopeful]

PERI Report- The Economic Impact of the PASSHE Employment Reductions

https://krc-pbpc.org/peri-report-the...ee-reductions/