PASSHE Institutions Merging

[Ship69]

"Free for certain people"

The somewhat more rational advocates of this may say this, but that is not what the true believers want. This kind of reminds me of the "defund the police" movement...The supposed "cooler heads" stepped in and said we REALLY don't want to defund and abolish the police, we just want to reprogram some money toward social programs...But then the real hard core of the movement stepped in and said "Yea, we said defund the police and that is EXACTLY what we want."

Very few cities "defunded" their police departments to any great extent, and the trend in the largest cities (New York, L.A., Chicago) in the past couple of years has been to increase police budgets.

[Fightingscot82]

"Free for certain people"

The somewhat more rational advocates of this may say this, but that is not what the true believers want. This kind of reminds me of the "defund the police" movement...The supposed "cooler heads" stepped in and said we REALLY don't want to defund and abolish the police, we just want to reprogram some money toward social programs...But then the real hard core of the movement stepped in and said "Yea, we said defund the police and that is EXACTLY what we want."

Agree with you here. The louder voices unfortunately are leading the narrative when the most people are paying attention.

[boatcapt]

Free for certain people - and only at public schools. Its a pretty small group advocating free for anybody and probably advocating for free everything. The government should work to ensure that the highest Pell Grant should cover all mandatory tuition & fees at government colleges and universities, especially in states (like Pennsylvania) that have additional state grant programs.

"Free for certain people"

The somewhat more rational advocates of this may say this, but that is not what the true believers want. This kind of reminds me of the "defund the police" movement...The supposed "cooler heads" stepped in and said we REALLY don't want to defund and abolish the police, we just want to reprogram some money toward social programs...But then the real hard core of the movement stepped in and said "Yea, we said defund the police and that is EXACTLY what we want."

[Fightingscot82]

Not surprizing. As a society, we are moving away from any sort of measurement that differentiates people. Many schools have gone away from even considering SAT/ACT scores in admissions...At the same time, we are seeing tremendous grade inflation at the high school level and students can actually increase their academic GPA through non-academic "community service." We are fast approaching the day when the ONLY ability necessary to graduate college is the ability to stroke a check. Of course, the liberals are trying to make college free so I guess at some point, even stroking a check won't be necessary.

Free for certain people - and only at public schools. Its a pretty small group advocating free for anybody and probably advocating for free everything. The government should work to ensure that the highest Pell Grant should cover all mandatory tuition & fees at government colleges and universities, especially in states (like Pennsylvania) that have additional state grant programs.

[Fightingscot82]

Why emphasize developing students at CC for transfer to the state system when the state system needs enrollment? They should enroll them directly into the state universities and work with them to achieve academic success.

Plus the community colleges as a group have a contractual obligation to sell their students on completing bachelors degrees with Southern New Hampshire University, as asinine as that sounds, its true.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Why emphasize developing students at CC for transfer to the state system when the state system needs enrollment? They should enroll them directly into the state universities and work with them to achieve academic success.

Seems PASSHE still seems to think their campuses are held in some high regard (when the outside world sees them mainly as community colleges).

I don't think there even is an admissions standard at our schools any longer. If you want to come -- can spell your name correctly and can somehow pay the bill -- you're in.

They need to be recruiting against the actual community colleges -- not partnering with them.

Hard to believe not all that long ago IUP would send applicants who didn't quite meet IUP's standard to the branch campus in Kittanning for their freshman year.

From the outside, the answer seems so clear. Close some of these schools. Pennsylvania no longer needs all these state schools. Politics, obviously, complicates matters. The 'triad' debacle is likely the first step.

[iupgroundhog]

Why emphasize developing students at CC for transfer to the state system when the state system needs enrollment? They should enroll them directly into the state universities and work with them to achieve academic success.

[boatcapt]

A longtime friend teaches 6th grade math in my local district. She said the school board has unofficially issued guidance that students should only be held back for behavioral/emotional issues that make them incompatible with students of the same age because parents lawyer up.

But as a society we've also shifted from teacher as authoritarian who knows best to teacher is an idiot liberal indoctrinating kids and grooming them for sexual deviance (or something considered to be sexually deviant). I'm also the kid of teachers and work in education, so I tend to fairly consider what my kids' teachers tell me.

Not surprizing. As a society, we are moving away from any sort of measurement that differentiates people. Many schools have gone away from even considering SAT/ACT scores in admissions...At the same time, we are seeing tremendous grade inflation at the high school level and students can actually increase their academic GPA through non-academic "community service." We are fast approaching the day when the ONLY ability necessary to graduate college is the ability to stroke a check. Of course, the liberals are trying to make college free so I guess at some point, even stroking a check won't be necessary.

[Fightingscot82]

I wonder how that is applying, behind closed doors, to our state schools -- who, surely don't want anybody flunking out.

Two decades ago you could actually flunk out of IUP or Edinboro, etc. Now I'd assume you are given about 5 chances.

I don't think their standard is any different. It usually takes 2-3 semesters of "failing" grades (below 2.0 GPA) to get academically suspended. Sometimes they'll even provide some advisement on courses to take at a community college to help get their GPA up. Sometimes they'll even make agreements to readmit the student if they get a certain GPA at the community college. I have seen kids readmitted who had less than a 1.0 GPA then took some classes at CCAC or CCBC.

Years ago when Edinboro had the first of two Ivy League snobs as President, he thought they should weed out more students. Every freshman who got below a 1.0 GPA their first semester was kicked out. That resulted in almost a $1 million revenue loss from fall to spring and was the first of several short-sighted financial decisions he ordered that hurt the school financially. This is an example why it doesn't matter how brilliant of a nuclear physicist someone is and/or they were tenured faculty at Princeton and Yale - it doesn't mean they understand how to run a university.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

A longtime friend teaches 6th grade math in my local district. She said the school board has unofficially issued guidance that students should only be held back for behavioral/emotional issues that make them incompatible with students of the same age because parents lawyer up.

But as a society we've also shifted from teacher as authoritarian who knows best to teacher is an idiot liberal indoctrinating kids and grooming them for sexual deviance (or something considered to be sexually deviant). I'm also the kid of teachers and work in education, so I tend to fairly consider what my kids' teachers tell me.

I wonder how that is applying, behind closed doors, to our state schools -- who, surely don't want anybody flunking out.

Two decades ago you could actually flunk out of IUP or Edinboro, etc. Now I'd assume you are given about 5 chances.

[Fightingscot82]

One CC I'm familiar with is seeing adults in their adult literacy program who have a second grade reading level. That's a sure sign of a problem.

A longtime friend teaches 6th grade math in my local district. She said the school board has unofficially issued guidance that students should only be held back for behavioral/emotional issues that make them incompatible with students of the same age because parents lawyer up.

But as a society we've also shifted from teacher as authoritarian who knows best to teacher is an idiot liberal indoctrinating kids and grooming them for sexual deviance (or something considered to be sexually deviant). I'm also the kid of teachers and work in education, so I tend to fairly consider what my kids' teachers tell me.

[IUPalum]

One CC I'm familiar with is seeing adults in their adult literacy program who have a second grade reading level. That's a sure sign of a problem.

Well, that's stating the obvious!

[WarriorVoice]

One CC I'm familiar with is seeing adults in their adult literacy program who have a second grade reading level. That's a sure sign of a problem.

[Bart]

So none of the students at any of these institutions are succeeding? I would think that most PASSHE schools had better try to recruit students wherever they can be found.

1 out of 6 "While four out of five students who begin at a community college say they plan to go on to get a bachelor’s degree, only about one in six of them actually manages to do it."

I guess this can be true of students everywhere. “You can’t expel Britta,” went a joke on the sitcom “Community,” about a community college. “She’s been here six years. Three more and she’ll have her two-year degree.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/educati...=pocket-newtab

[Fightingscot82]

These recent agreements are designed to make transfer more seamless. That's why they were signed.

That's what every articulation agreement is for. Essentially they agree that a certain grade in community college course A is guaranteed to be credited as Shippensburg course A. Its so regular that I don't understand why schools even announce them anymore. The only schools that don't have these agreements are the academic elites (Carnegie Mellon, Penn, Brynn Mawr, Swarthmore, etc). Even the second tier elite academic schools like Lehigh and Franklin & Marshall have them.