PASSHE Institutions Merging

[Fightingscot82]

I think people are over stating the desire of current students to want to go to a hometown university. When the PASSHE schools opened, the roadway system was not nearly as evolved as it is now so it was not an easy trek to go from say the area south of Pittsburg to say Indiana PA. Students now can easily travel home every weekend if the choose from almost every "region" in the state. Also have to factor in on-line courses which were growing even before Covid. Heck, with some creative scheduling, it would not be impossible for a student who grew up in the Mon Valley to go to Edinboro and spend four days a week at "home" eating mom and dads groceries and having mom do his or her laundry. Only have to spend an ENTIRE week on campus if there was a kegger going on Friday night!!

Having so many "regional" universities that duplicated curriculum made sense "back in the day." Now, you could really meet the needs of most PA college students with four or maybe five strategically placed universities with enrollment in the 20k range. Take the money that PASSHE currently disburses among the 14 universities and distribute it to five better funded and larger universities.

Financial and geographic access are the #1 drivers of PASSHE enrollment.

I can't find the data to accurately cite, but most students attending PASSHE schools are from within 50-75 miles of campus. So when IUP cuts art programs that doesn't necessarily mean that Edinboro benefits. When Clarion and Edinboro cut music programs, the enrollment in music programs at IUP and Slippery Rock didn't increase.

The only variable that will increase enrollment is reducing cost (increasing the savings from state related branches and regional privates). Reducing locations will reduce enrollment.

[complaint_hopeful]

Yes - And that's a concern I have with the Cal, Clarion, Edinboro triad. It's built around online education. Literally every college in the US now offers online classes thanks to covid. So then, it will become about quality and innovation. I don't know that schools with financial constraints will be able to afford what's needed to innovate.

[boatcapt]

They merged several schools in pairs, one middling school with a nearby healthier school. Nearly all were mid-sized schools with a rural community college. The goals were to reduce administrative costs and create a stronger path for CC students to attend public universities. The results are lackluster. Administration costs are negligible and students aren't continuing at a significantly better rate.

The outlier in many ways was Georgia Southern and Armstrong State. They're about 50 miles apart in the Savannah region. They renamed Armstrong as Georgia Southern - Armstrong and made big campus experience cuts like cutting the entire D2 athletics department. Enrollment is down 20% at the Armstrong campus and there's a growing contingent of alumni and community leaders wanting to undo the pairing.

I think people are over stating the desire of current students to want to go to a hometown university. When the PASSHE schools opened, the roadway system was not nearly as evolved as it is now so it was not an easy trek to go from say the area south of Pittsburg to say Indiana PA. Students now can easily travel home every weekend if the choose from almost every "region" in the state. Also have to factor in on-line courses which were growing even before Covid. Heck, with some creative scheduling, it would not be impossible for a student who grew up in the Mon Valley to go to Edinboro and spend four days a week at "home" eating mom and dads groceries and having mom do his or her laundry. Only have to spend an ENTIRE week on campus if there was a kegger going on Friday night!!

Having so many "regional" universities that duplicated curriculum made sense "back in the day." Now, you could really meet the needs of most PA college students with four or maybe five strategically placed universities with enrollment in the 20k range. Take the money that PASSHE currently disburses among the 14 universities and distribute it to five better funded and larger universities.

[iupgroundhog]

It's not a strategy.

It's not a strategic approach. It's a tactical approach. It's morphed into a tactical approach for the purpose of meeting the financial requirements outlined by the state. Most likely it needs a strategic approach to be successful but it is all oriented towards meeting short-term financial goals.

As a result, what is to come out of it will not be optimal. Maybe not even sensible. Or fair.

[complaint_hopeful]

They merged several schools in pairs, one middling school with a nearby healthier school. Nearly all were mid-sized schools with a rural community college. The goals were to reduce administrative costs and create a stronger path for CC students to attend public universities. The results are lackluster. Administration costs are negligible and students aren't continuing at a significantly better rate.

The outlier in many ways was Georgia Southern and Armstrong State. They're about 50 miles apart in the Savannah region. They renamed Armstrong as Georgia Southern - Armstrong and made big campus experience cuts like cutting the entire D2 athletics department. Enrollment is down 20% at the Armstrong campus and there's a growing contingent of alumni and community leaders wanting to undo the pairing.

Very interesting. It will be interesting to see if Bloom and to a lesser extent Cal U prop these other schools up...or if these other schools lose so much enrollment that it lowers the overall enrollment of the triad.

I also wonder if these triads will get marketed more because they want them to succeed, thus taking enrollment from other state schools. There will be some program overlap with other schools surely.

[Fightingscot82]

Great! I was fairly sure I heard that.

There were some posts above on the Georgia integrations maybe not being as successful as hoped. Would anyone care to share specifics of what they did? Maybe a nice bullet pointed summary of key points?

They merged several schools in pairs, one middling school with a nearby healthier school. Nearly all were mid-sized schools with a rural community college. The goals were to reduce administrative costs and create a stronger path for CC students to attend public universities. The results are lackluster. Administration costs are negligible and students aren't continuing at a significantly better rate.

The outlier in many ways was Georgia Southern and Armstrong State. They're about 50 miles apart in the Savannah region. They renamed Armstrong as Georgia Southern - Armstrong and made big campus experience cuts like cutting the entire D2 athletics department. Enrollment is down 20% at the Armstrong campus and there's a growing contingent of alumni and community leaders wanting to undo the pairing.

[complaint_hopeful]

I've been told that by someone who would know.

Great! I was fairly sure I heard that.

There were some posts above on the Georgia integrations maybe not being as successful as hoped. Would anyone care to share specifics of what they did? Maybe a nice bullet pointed summary of key points?

[Fightingscot82]

IF I caught it correctly on the BOG call, they had someone who was part of the Georgia Integrations as part of the team. Can anyone confirm they heard this too? It was a brief introduction.

I've been told that by someone who would know.

[complaint_hopeful]

There is no plan because the two triads will be different from the other. My concern is that there's not a best practice out there to follow or inspire and no clear framework for our needs. Texas consolidated campuses to create a larger D1 school. It worked because that's what students wanted. That's not the plan here. Georgia paired strong schools with struggling schools and community colleges. It hasn't worked. The savings have been minimal, especially in Savannah where the Georgia Southern & Armstrong State merger has resulted in a 20% enrollment decline. We also don't know how prospective students will react. This should scare us because above all the decrease in enrollment is driving this.

I don't think that big athletics cuts will come. It's short sighted because our costs are low and drive enrollment. Cutting LH football makes the triad lose 100+ students. This is why Mansfield didn't cut football outright. I bet we'll see coaching staff reductions. I've heard rumors of a ratio for FT coaches such as one for every 30 participants.

FWIW, only the legislature can close a PASSHE school, and we know that's very unlikely. The system board can merge and consolidate but they can't close.

IF I caught it correctly on the BOG call, they had someone who was part of the Georgia Integrations as part of the team. Can anyone confirm they heard this too? It was a brief introduction.

[complaint_hopeful]

It's not a strategy.

You are right that he might not have a detailed vision for the merged schools. And that's not a good thing. If he does have a detailed vision he needs to lay it out for the schools and the public.

You can't implement these initial steps that will likely cripple some of the schools and then say 'See, these schools aren't viable. so we have to take further steps.' He needs to lay out a long-term plan or this isn't going to work and everybody will lose.

However, there are things that are implied. It's plain to see that the Northcentral plan will have the effect of reducing LHU to a Bloom outpost. Given the current size of the school when you gut it according to the existing plan it will lead to a downward spiral. So. LHU won't survive under Greenstein's plan. That is a significant thing.

Nor is the Western PA plan strategic. A regional strategy would encompass all of the regional resources, i.e. inclusive of SRU and IUP It doesn't seem to go anywhere by combining the 3 most struggling schools into one. I think geography plays a role and throwing Cal into the mix with Clarion and Edinboro makes little sense.

Greenstein's original plan didn't freak everybody out. But what appears happened is that SRU pressured him and was able to get out of the merger talks. That should not have happened. Additionally, IUP is now at about 65% capacity. IMO. that should be addressed by combining IUP and Cal.

This has some really good points. I think what they're banking on is schools with 5k, 5k, and 7k enrollment for instance combining and having 17k enrollment at the end. But, then you eliminate a bunch of programs which leads to less faculty, and you share services and have less staff. And then: Voila! Your personnel costs are much less and you have the same amount of students.

But, a lot of these schools are already short-staffed in departments as a common cost savings measure was to not rehire positions when people left or retired, I just don't see how like 1/3 of the staff are going to support 3x the customer without quality going down. You can apply that to Faculty also although with online classes you can theoretically put more kids in a class. But, maybe you can't...because real-time Zoom classes seem to be catching on. Not sure you can just jam 40 kids on a zoom call.

This is strange to me also. They're looking at sharing services regionally and as a system. Purchasing is an example which will have East and West. They're not looking to eliminate employees which I deduce. They're looking to have schools all buy from the same place. Now in some cases this results in cost savings, but not always. Also, schools buy some products from local vendors. Not buying from them hurts them.

Then, they're looking at sharing resources among the triad. Eliminating programs. Sharing administrative functions...which sounds great. And maybe for like payroll it will work great. But, I don't see like 1/3 of the Admission Staff for instance just doing 3 times the work. It's like that for a lot of functions. And on payroll, it's not like schools have 10 payroll employees. It's probably 2-3 each.

Then, they have the sustainability plans which I believe were developed in isolation and not considering the triads. And they were accelerated.

re: Sharing Services - It's a great concept. But, to become a service provider...you need common processes and procedures. Many of these schools, if they were assessed for process maturity...would be level 0 or level 1. Just fixing this lack of process, would probably help retention. But, to merge a bunch of entities with no to little processes and figure that all out on the fly...has little shot to work in an optimal way.

[Fightingscot82]

Good NYT article. Covers a lot of ground. Greenstein mentioned.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/co...?ocid=msedgntp

I just finished reading it. Goes to show that PASSHE isn't operating in a vacuum.

[iupgroundhog]

Good NYT article. Covers a lot of ground. Greenstein mentioned.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/co...?ocid=msedgntp

[Fightingscot82]

I agree that it's sports-heavy but he might just be reinforcing his point. I am both an academic person and a sports person so I get it, I think.

When asked about implications for athletics and whether he has consulted the NCAA Greenstein couldn't answer. I kind of think that is unacceptable.

If you take away the football misery, LHU is a sports school and LH is a sports town. Taking that away is a real hit to the local culture.

No other PSAC school has racked up as many NCAA championships across different men's and women's sports as LHU. I know Bloom has accumulated a lot of Field Hockey championships in D2 but that is only since LHU moved up to D1 in FH. The Haven program was always ahead of Bloom.

As the letter writer mentioned, 20% of LHU's student population are NCAA athletes. No other PSAC school comes close to that.

Of course, the wrestling is well-known. The writer mentions the cross-country course which LHU even allows PSU to use for meets. The legacy of women's sports. Even on the club level the Boxing Club is one of the top intercollegiate programs and brings in the service academies and others for meets. Ship also comes for that so maybe you are aware of it.

So, I think answers need to be given related to sports upfront.

All great evidence for keeping athletics largely intact at all schools.

It's not Greenstein's place to contact the NCAA. The individual schools but not a state bureaucrat. If it's one school with one administration/faculty/accreditation then it's up to the one school.

There is precedence for one school with multiple campuses competing at the same level. Southern Illinois does this at the D1 level although they belong to different conferences. Fairleigh Dickinson has two campuses with different classifications similar to what LIU did.

[iupgroundhog]

Perhaps a little heavy on the athletics end of it. As much as we care about our sports, the school is there for education first.

But I think the letter makes great points otherwise.

I've been knocked in the past for what others call a "what about the waitresses?" outlook. But a drop in LHU's status would have an adverse effect on the entire community. Same for any college town facing merger.

I'd go as far as to say that the state needs to account for leaking money on its schools, and accept it as the cost of doing business in higher education.

I agree that it's sports-heavy but he might just be reinforcing his point. I am both an academic person and a sports person so I get it, I think.

When asked about implications for athletics and whether he has consulted the NCAA Greenstein couldn't answer. I kind of think that is unacceptable.

If you take away the football misery, LHU is a sports school and LH is a sports town. Taking that away is a real hit to the local culture.

No other PSAC school has racked up as many NCAA championships across different men's and women's sports as LHU. I know Bloom has accumulated a lot of Field Hockey championships in D2 but that is only since LHU moved up to D1 in FH. The Haven program was always ahead of Bloom.

As the letter writer mentioned, 20% of LHU's student population are NCAA athletes. No other PSAC school comes close to that.

Of course, the wrestling is well-known. The writer mentions the cross-country course which LHU even allows PSU to use for meets. The legacy of women's sports. Even on the club level the Boxing Club is one of the top intercollegiate programs and brings in the service academies and others for meets. Ship also comes for that so maybe you are aware of it.

So, I think answers need to be given related to sports upfront.

[iupgroundhog]

There is no plan because the two triads will be different from the other.

I think there has to be a plan.

The reason being is that the cat has been let out of the bag and it's not just about making the schools and the system economically viable. It's about public perceptions, the viability of the communities, and the culture of the communities.

I think there are a lot of roadblocks ahead.