PASSHE Institutions Merging

[Fightingscot82]

It's interesting how the perception of supporters change when the wolfs at the door. I recall not just discent but outright contempt among the masses on this board when a schools full time undergrad percentage would dip and the school would pursue part-time "adult" students or certificate seekers. It was something "real" schools just didn't do and any school that did was substandard and filled a lower place in the college continuum that THEIR institute of higher learning which would NEVER stoop to. Likewise "on-line" education...That was the purview of community colleges and for profit schools. REAL brick and mortar schools like theirs would never lower themselves to trafficking in such low level students. And a school that tried to increase or sustain enrolment through athletics? Well, THEY were CLEARLY one step away from closing their doors and selling their furniture to a local pawn shop to cover their final bills! I remember more than one post about how schools like this should be closed by what ever oversight authority managed them IMMEDIATELY!!!!

You're not wrong. Universities are people and buildings, and neither change easily. My wife is in an online grad program with a PASSHE university. It promised that she could work at her own pace since its designed for working professionals. Every course so far is basically a professor leading a correspondence course with specific due dates on assignments. When asked, the professor said this is how they teach the in person class and she's not going to grade different assignments at the same times. The online for-profit start ups were able to take advantage of this and create much more convenient online education - they just used predatory tactics to enroll students.

[Fightingscot82]

That number even seems low. If you can spell your name and your check clears ... right now that should be the only requirement.

A regional public should indeed have higher acceptance rates. Admissions is a mess right now because we've thrown out the reliability of SAT/ACT but GPAs are so inflated. There are far more students graduating with GPAs above 3.0 than before that its hard to not accept more. But we're stuck with some harsh realities: we're in the bottom half of the higher ed hierarchy, we generally don't offer programs that attract or require the top students, we don't have financial aid to throw at the top students, and we're in a region with evaporating high school classes.

Commonwealth: 97%
Kutztown: 96%
East Stroudsburg: 94%
PennWest: 94%
Indiana: 92%
Millersville: 92%
Shippensburg: 88%
West Chester: 88%
Slippery Rock: 74%

Cheyney is open enrollment with proof of high school completion and submission of FAFSA.

Source: US Department of Education data warehouse



***For those who aren't regular consumers of higher ed stats, they are rarely how they read at face value. Acceptance rate is based on your applicant pool. I always say, if 10 supermodels asked someone out, they'd probably find a way to make it work with all 10, and have a 100% acceptance rate. Admits are up as high school GPAs soar. The other stat that isn't what it seems is graduation rate, but that's another topic.***

[ironmaniup]

It's interesting how the perception of supporters change when the wolfs at the door. I recall not just discent but outright contempt among the masses on this board when a schools full time undergrad percentage would dip and the school would pursue part-time "adult" students or certificate seekers. It was something "real" schools just didn't do and any school that did was substandard and filled a lower place in the college continuum that THEIR institute of higher learning which would NEVER stoop to. Likewise "on-line" education...That was the purview of community colleges and for profit schools. REAL brick and mortar schools like theirs would never lower themselves to trafficking in such low level students. And a school that tried to increase or sustain enrolment through athletics? Well, THEY were CLEARLY one step away from closing their doors and selling their furniture to a local pawn shop to cover their final bills! I remember more than one post about how schools like this should be closed by what ever oversight authority managed them IMMEDIATELY!!!!

I still contend that these changes are a problem for the struggling campuses. First, lots of these ideas end up not working, and are bad ideas from some educational think tank somewhere. Second, even if its a good idea, the big schools will take over the market, and use their resources and reputation to dominate the market. When a football team is doing poorly, lots of gadget plays don't work, getting back to doing fundamentals well works. The state system was designed to give students a quality education at an affordable price. Anything that gets away from those two fundamentals is just a distraction. Is the current trendy utilitarian educational initiatives a type of educational quality ? I don't think so.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Admitting 70-80 percent of applicants...isn't that what a public university should be doing? Isn't that really the mission of the State System? To be where the tax paying public can send their kids for a college education?

That number even seems low. If you can spell your name and your check clears ... right now that should be the only requirement.

[IUPNation]

Many of our schools are admitting 70-80 percent or more of applicants. You can have legitimate discussions about how best to do things, but we're certainly not taking an elitist attitude when it comes to educating students in Pa. What is more common is that students have been taught that state schools are "fall back" schools when they're not admitted to one of the supposedly elite colleges.

Admitting 70-80 percent of applicants...isn't that what a public university should be doing? Isn't that really the mission of the State System? To be where the tax paying public can send their kids for a college education?

[Ship69]

It's interesting how the perception of supporters change when the wolfs at the door. I recall not just discent but outright contempt among the masses on this board when a schools full time undergrad percentage would dip and the school would pursue part-time "adult" students or certificate seekers. It was something "real" schools just didn't do and any school that did was substandard and filled a lower place in the college continuum that THEIR institute of higher learning which would NEVER stoop to. Likewise "on-line" education...That was the purview of community colleges and for profit schools. REAL brick and mortar schools like theirs would never lower themselves to trafficking in such low level students. And a school that tried to increase or sustain enrolment through athletics? Well, THEY were CLEARLY one step away from closing their doors and selling their furniture to a local pawn shop to cover their final bills! I remember more than one post about how schools like this should be closed by what ever oversight authority managed them IMMEDIATELY!!!!

Many of our schools are admitting 70-80 percent or more of applicants. You can have legitimate discussions about how best to do things, but we're certainly not taking an elitist attitude when it comes to educating students in Pa. What is more common is that students have been taught that state schools are "fall back" schools when they're not admitted to one of the supposedly elite colleges.

[boatcapt]

Well, the problem is that once a place really commits to on-line certificate chasing by already employed millennials or some other great hope, there is a very real chance they will lose their traditional mission to others who kept working on that mission, but there is no guarantee that a specific new direction will be successful. Its a classic difficult problem. when do you move, and when do you stay put with what you got.

It's interesting how the perception of supporters change when the wolfs at the door. I recall not just discent but outright contempt among the masses on this board when a schools full time undergrad percentage would dip and the school would pursue part-time "adult" students or certificate seekers. It was something "real" schools just didn't do and any school that did was substandard and filled a lower place in the college continuum that THEIR institute of higher learning which would NEVER stoop to. Likewise "on-line" education...That was the purview of community colleges and for profit schools. REAL brick and mortar schools like theirs would never lower themselves to trafficking in such low level students. And a school that tried to increase or sustain enrolment through athletics? Well, THEY were CLEARLY one step away from closing their doors and selling their furniture to a local pawn shop to cover their final bills! I remember more than one post about how schools like this should be closed by what ever oversight authority managed them IMMEDIATELY!!!!

[Fightingscot82]

Some good news:

State House bill 1300 has been referred to the House Rules Committee for review/edits. This bill would force PASSHE to hold the line on tuition for the next two years (nothing on funding increases to cover increased expenses) and allow individual PASSHE presidents to waive the out of state tuition waiver for students in states that border Pennsylvania.

[ironmaniup]

Getting these three campuses to shift/pivot away from recruiting & enrolling 17 year olds who want to learn in person is like throwing the wheel on the Titanic once the iceberg was spotted.

Well, the problem is that once a place really commits to on-line certificate chasing by already employed millennials or some other great hope, there is a very real chance they will lose their traditional mission to others who kept working on that mission, but there is no guarantee that a specific new direction will be successful. Its a classic difficult problem. when do you move, and when do you stay put with what you got.

[Fightingscot82]

Getting these three campuses to shift/pivot away from recruiting & enrolling 17 year olds who want to learn in person is like throwing the wheel on the Titanic once the iceberg was spotted.

[Ship69]

I firmly believe that Clarion will not exist in 10 years, I cant say anything for Cal or Boro but I feel pretty confident they will be fine. Clarion is falling apart at the seems with almost no enrollment and things constantly falling apart, they cant catch a break.

With the student situation, the struggles at some of the campuses, and 20 Penn State branch campuses out there, something is going to give. I volunteered at an event at my local high school last week and talked to a couple of kids who are going to Penn State Mont Alto. Our town is 35 minutes from Ship, so stuff like this impacts us.

[SecretlySavage]

Pennsylvania Sh*t Show of Higher Education

https://triblive.com/local/regional/...-yet-to-begin/

I firmly believe that Clarion will not exist in 10 years, I cant say anything for Cal or Boro but I feel pretty confident they will be fine. Clarion is falling apart at the seems with almost no enrollment and things constantly falling apart, they cant catch a break.

[Fightingscot82]

Pennsylvania Sh*t Show of Higher Education

https://triblive.com/local/regional/...-yet-to-begin/

[boatcapt]

So this kind of analysis has been the thing that frustrated me through my entire career. Its artificial, and depends on how you define the economic unit. of course there are more costs than this. For instance, it doesn't include maintenance costs of facilities, which are much higher with a team, Having a D2 football team requires you have a certain number of teams which don't have such a huge roster or fanbase to create this payout, More athletes mean more support personnel are required - things like staff for the AD. So administrators should look at different combinations of sports, and judge the ROI from athletics as a whole. Winning is important too, since having no winning teams hurts with recruitment and fund raising. With Cheyney, regularly being the butt of programs in PASSHE hurt them in a number of ways. In PASSHE this is a problem across the systems, with doing financial analysis on programs, and departments. The wrong grouping, gives you wrong answers, and set different divisions, that should be working together, at odds with one another. It incentivizes the interests of faculty and administrators over the interests of students - and many of the requirements to do this come from Harrisburg.

College sports financial numbers are like game attendance numbers. They seem to be open to wildly different interpretations of what constitutes revenue and what constitutes cost. I think the bottom line is the cost/benefit is never as rosy as us fans want it to be nore is it as bleak as the "we should plow every dollar into academics" crowd believes sports are.

[Fightingscot82]

So this kind of analysis has been the thing that frustrated me through my entire career. Its artificial, and depends on how you define the economic unit. of course there are more costs than this. For instance, it doesn't include maintenance costs of facilities, which are much higher with a team, Having a D2 football team requires you have a certain number of teams which don't have such a huge roster or fanbase to create this payout, More athletes mean more support personnel are required - things like staff for the AD. So administrators should look at different combinations of sports, and judge the ROI from athletics as a whole. Winning is important too, since having no winning teams hurts with recruitment and fund raising. With Cheyney, regularly being the butt of programs in PASSHE hurt them in a number of ways. In PASSHE this is a problem across the systems, with doing financial analysis on programs, and departments. The wrong grouping, gives you wrong answers, and set different divisions, that should be working together, at odds with one another. It incentivizes the interests of faculty and administrators over the interests of students - and many of the requirements to do this come from Harrisburg.

I agree with what you're saying about expenses. The fact remains though that the tuition & fee revenue for these players only exists because of the sport. Yes, I imagine it's pretty close to break even if you consider all other costs to run an athletic department.