PASSHE Institutions Merging

[IUPNation]

I've read several stories plus insight from folks I know in the Penn State network. Current senior administration and trustees don't think the 20 campus branch system fits into the Penn State of the future, especially with a fully solvent online degree system. A lot were created before community colleges were a thing - but most are in towns that are no longer economically stable and are in population decline. 12 of 20 have enrollments below 1,000. The 8 larger campuses are nearly all of the total branch enrollment and are in more stable areas. They're safe. The med school in Hershey and the law school in Carlisle are staying put. Penn State oversees Penn College in Williamsport but they operate with much more autonomy. Most of these smaller branches are really glorified community colleges that help facilitate transfer to "Penn State." The larger ones replicate a smaller PASSHE campus with Penn State branding.

They're going to look at population projections and see which campus closures would create a higher ed desert. I bet the closure list gets pared down to 4 or 5. A couple around Pittsburgh plus one of either Shenango or DuBois, then 1 of the 3 south central (Great Valley, Mont Alto, York), then 1 of the 4 eastern: Hazleton (likely), Schuylkill, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre.

FWIW, Pitt needs to do the same. Their 4 branch campuses have total enrollment barely over 4,000. Pitt Johnstown is about 1,800, Greensburg about 1,300, Bradford about 1,000, Titusville is down to less than 50.

Pitt should merge Greensburg into UPJ.

[Ship69]

We have tough admissions these days.

1) Can you somehow pay the bill

2) Are you alive

Note: (1) is the most important


The end

The average student debt in 2024 was about $38,000. The average new car price in the U.S. was over $45,000. Guess it all adds up to which you consider more worthwhile.

[Fightingscot82]

Philly Inquirer has a similar story, behind a paywall...

I've read several stories plus insight from folks I know in the Penn State network. Current senior administration and trustees don't think the 20 campus branch system fits into the Penn State of the future, especially with a fully solvent online degree system. A lot were created before community colleges were a thing - but most are in towns that are no longer economically stable and are in population decline. 12 of 20 have enrollments below 1,000. The 8 larger campuses are nearly all of the total branch enrollment and are in more stable areas. They're safe. The med school in Hershey and the law school in Carlisle are staying put. Penn State oversees Penn College in Williamsport but they operate with much more autonomy. Most of these smaller branches are really glorified community colleges that help facilitate transfer to "Penn State." The larger ones replicate a smaller PASSHE campus with Penn State branding.

They're going to look at population projections and see which campus closures would create a higher ed desert. I bet the closure list gets pared down to 4 or 5. A couple around Pittsburgh plus one of either Shenango or DuBois, then 1 of the 3 south central (Great Valley, Mont Alto, York), then 1 of the 4 eastern: Hazleton (likely), Schuylkill, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre.

FWIW, Pitt needs to do the same. Their 4 branch campuses have total enrollment barely over 4,000. Pitt Johnstown is about 1,800, Greensburg about 1,300, Bradford about 1,000, Titusville is down to less than 50.

[WarriorVoice]

Penn State has shared internally that they plan to close 5-7 branch campuses. 12 of 20 have had enrollment decline in the last 5 years.

As I typed that I was waiting for it to leak out, this gets shared with me: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/ed...s/202502250069

Philly Inquirer has a similar story, behind a paywall...

[Fightingscot82]

Penn State has shared internally that they plan to close 5-7 branch campuses. 12 of 20 have had enrollment decline in the last 5 years.

As I typed that I was waiting for it to leak out, this gets shared with me: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/ed...s/202502250069

[Fightingscot82]

We have tough admissions these days.

1) Can you somehow pay the bill

2) Are you alive

Note: (1) is the most important


The end

LOL you think they ask #1? They just let you know how much it costs then send a bill. Buyer's responsibility to piece together the payment method(s).

The real questions are:

1) Were you at least a mediocre high school student?

2) Were in you in regular, non-special ed track classes?

Good, you're accepted.

College admissions is a funny game though. Really nobody is doing anything special to only recruit applications from the best students. Some schools just do a much better job of attracting above average students. Sometimes this is by what sports you offer or what majors you have. But SRU isn't doing anything different in admissions to differentiate their 71% acceptance rate versus IUP's 91% acceptance rate or Penn West's 94% acceptance rate. Theoretically, IUP would accept 100% of applicants if they had 3,000 applicants with a 4.0 and 1,500 SAT.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

What an asshat. These are colleges that are taking 75-80 percent of applicants, as is the mission of a state public university. Nobody of any race or religion with the slightest chance of doing college work is being rejected from PASSHE universities. In taking a wide range of students, they are fulfilling their obligation to the state's young people. He started out at Lehigh Carbon Community College. I'm sure that is a very selective institution. I don't know if there is anything that irritates me more than people who have benefitted from our college and university system and then want to deny those opportunities to others.

We have tough admissions these days.

1) Can you somehow pay the bill

2) Are you alive

Note: (1) is the most important


The end

[Ship69]

Jarrett Coleman is a entitled douchebag.

What an asshat. These are colleges that are taking 75-80 percent of applicants, as is the mission of a state public university. Nobody of any race or religion with the slightest chance of doing college work is being rejected from PASSHE universities. In taking a wide range of students, they are fulfilling their obligation to the state's young people. He started out at Lehigh Carbon Community College. I'm sure that is a very selective institution. I don't know if there is anything that irritates me more than people who have benefitted from our college and university system and then want to deny those opportunities to others.

[IUPNation]

Yeah but I would have hoped for better preparation from the chancellor, granted that's not his forte, but still. I also would have wanted to hear more about how PASSHE students are the most vulnerable to price. The funding increases have also held base tuition since 2018, which helps our students. Adjusted for inflation, that's a 25% savings over what tuition would have been at trend before the freeze. And that's with diversity programs. Our locations mean we're going to need to have support structures and services for minority and modest income students. What's next - no more remedial classes? If they want to say we can't require classes that cover diversity topics, fine, but then we shouldn't be allowed to require foreign language either.

Coleman ran because he is opposed to critical race theory. What a shock. You can look at him and see he thinks the world should bow down to his entitled ass.

[RockPride]

Oof

https://senatorcoleman.com/2025/02/1...-passhe-pheaa/

What an absolute douchebag. This country should be so proud of itself for becoming a bastion of integrity and as a "moral compass" for the rest of the earth. I'm so happy when that orange Lumbering Choad came down the golden escalator of TT, he in essence, kicked in the door and allowed all of the closet bigots and emboldened the keyboard warriors to step out of their beta man-caves and made this main-stream. I just can't anymore....

[Fightingscot82]

Jarrett Coleman is a entitled douchebag.

Yeah but I would have hoped for better preparation from the chancellor, granted that's not his forte, but still. I also would have wanted to hear more about how PASSHE students are the most vulnerable to price. The funding increases have also held base tuition since 2018, which helps our students. Adjusted for inflation, that's a 25% savings over what tuition would have been at trend before the freeze. And that's with diversity programs. Our locations mean we're going to need to have support structures and services for minority and modest income students. What's next - no more remedial classes? If they want to say we can't require classes that cover diversity topics, fine, but then we shouldn't be allowed to require foreign language either.

[IUPNation]

Oof

https://senatorcoleman.com/2025/02/1...-passhe-pheaa/

Jarrett Coleman is a entitled douchebag.

[Fightingscot82]

Oof

https://senatorcoleman.com/2025/02/1...-passhe-pheaa/

[Ship69]

I'm not making this political, just sharing something that happened Friday evening. The federal Dept of Education issued orders to every educational entity pre-K through universities that gives them 14 days to remove EVERY program related to race regardless of funding source or face loss of federal funding eligibility (such as eligible for students to use their federal grants and loans or federal work study funds). During Black History Month is the irony of ironies. Our schools, already mostly located in communities devoid of diverse population (and even less outside their limits), now will have to eliminate anything that helps support non-white students who feel completely out of place in the rural college towns of PA - especially those from communities don't resemble say Shippensburg or Clarion in any way. Schools also can't use other demographics as a proxy for race (such as low income or first generation). There are going to be a lot of football players a lot less comfortable.

Because this was completely unexpected, nobody knows what this means for schools where race and culture are part of their very core, such as HBCUs Cheyney and Lincoln. West Virginia passed a similar law a few months ago that on paper reads like Bluefield State and West Virginia State have to close.

The Trump movement has entirely overturned our notion of where the two political parties stand. Remember when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility and local control small government. Now there's a movement within the party to up the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, and they're attempting to ram their educational policy down everyone's throats from D.C. If I was on a school board in a district that didn't need much federal money, I'd tell them to shove their aid, but many school districts are not in a position to do it So in a mostly-minority inner city school district you're not going to be able to have any programs related to diversity and pride. It's pretty obvious what these measures are targeting. One thing that might help us at the PASSHE schools is that our admissions are not as exclusionary as the more elite schools, so it would be hard to frame our admitting minority students as some sort of affirmative action gig. The meritocracy thing can be a joke anyway. Northwestern took something like 3,250 kids for its last class out of 39,000 applications. So was applicant 3,250 really more worthy than applicant 3,284? Who the hell knows?

[iupgroundhog]

I'm not going to comment on the people in power, elected or not. Keeping it to the order.

Its bad policy.

I think you've already commented. I respect not jumping into the politics but sooner or later it's going to engulf everything and it will be unavoidable. Everybody is going to be in awe of how far-reaching these things are. And I don't mean 'awe' in any positive way.