PASSHE Institutions Merging

[boatcapt]

It's basically a death spiral. You start losing enrollment so you cut expenses. Then you get bad press from the Unions. So most of your cuts are services and not people. And you slowly erode your quality down to the point where you are buildings and classes with nothing to do for students, but you're charging a lot of money.

Yea, death spirals are usually exasperated by small incremental changes. When you are in a death spiral, you often have to make a BIG change to get suficiently in front of the problem and build a firewall

[complaint_hopeful]

If it ever worked. People tend to look at the schools doing well and assign things they're doing to enrollment gains. Maybe it is the reason. Maybe not.

[IUPNation]

[complaint_hopeful]

1 million dollars for every 100 students roughly. The other question is the breakdown of lower incoming Freshman, or lower retention. At IUP retention fall to spring was up, but I hadn't seen the retention Fall to Fall. From what I hear about students that have been through a Zoom heavy senior year, the retention won't be very good for this years incoming Freshman either. .

It's basically a death spiral. You start losing enrollment so you cut expenses. Then you get bad press from the Unions. So most of your cuts are services and not people. And you slowly erode your quality down to the point where you are buildings and classes with nothing to do for students, but you're charging a lot of money.

[complaint_hopeful]

Once again, the Penn State Outlet Stores are in more serious decline but the headlines are about PASSHE.

Yep. They have the big main campus to carry them.

It's interesting that PASSHE seems to disdain that. Like PASSHE calls it cross-subsidization and talks about it like it's terrible. But, say WC and 2 other schools did great and could help the others.

Instead PASSHE went the route of the mergers and the toxic press associated with them...and talked about disolving PASSHE if they were voted down. Well, with the BOG voting and it clearly being for the mergers, maybe the Chancellor could have just stayed cool publicly and not made any huge, controversial statements and kept the press as positive as possible.

[complaint_hopeful]

Exactly. Maybe this is the size they're needed to be?

[ironmaniup]

PASSHE needs atleast the WC's and IUP's gaining enrollment to make up for the other campuses. When they ALL DECLINE, this thing starts crashing down in a big way.

What is kind of hidden in the numbers is most of the losses are in undergrad. So you lose a paying student for 4 years. Grad school is up, but you only get them for like 18 months.

1 million dollars for every 100 students roughly. The other question is the breakdown of lower incoming Freshman, or lower retention. At IUP retention fall to spring was up, but I hadn't seen the retention Fall to Fall. From what I hear about students that have been through a Zoom heavy senior year, the retention won't be very good for this years incoming Freshman either. .

[Fightingscot82]

Undergraduate enrollment at Pennsylvania State University is up 2% at its main campus in University Park, but residential undergraduate enrollment at its other campuses is down 7.5%, said spokesperson Lisa Powers

Once again, the Penn State Outlet Stores are in more serious decline but the headlines are about PASSHE.

[IUPNation]

[iupgroundhog]

They almost have to. My guess is they start sharing online classes across more schools than just the Triads at minimum.

But, I could see a Phase 2 of these Integrations with a new set of schools.

It's interesting that IUP dipped under 10,000 students...because wasn't that the magic number in the law where you couldn't be merged with? Not saying PASSHE would do that with IUP, but who knows? I think we're getting to the point where anything is on the table.

I think the way it was written was 10k or more as of a certain date in 2020. That means IUP.. It doesn't change. Until it does.

[complaint_hopeful]

PASSHE needs atleast the WC's and IUP's gaining enrollment to make up for the other campuses. When they ALL DECLINE, this thing starts crashing down in a big way.

What is kind of hidden in the numbers is most of the losses are in undergrad. So you lose a paying student for 4 years. Grad school is up, but you only get them for like 18 months.

[complaint_hopeful]

I think, worst case scenario, PASSHE merges everyone into one of two directionals with IUP and WC as hub campuses. Maybe they can force a merger between Cheyney & Lincoln.

A lot more mergers are coming. Might as well get ahead of it and give us time to get it right. Its pretty rare that PASSHE is ahead of the curve.

I think a variant of that could happen, or maybe it's the same thing as your describing. I think what you see at the Triads applied to like a directional. And maybe parts of that are applied systemwide, and back-end sharing of services is directional. There are 2 purchasing groups...1 for the East and 1 for the West. HR and some other services are supposed to go next.

Like you might have a professor at campus 1 in a classroom, and you might be in a classroom or home at campus 2 taking that class via video. Some variant. There will be less professors to deliver classes. More sharing of resources.

The question is, will that be enough to keep this thing afloat? I really don't know. I don't see the Triads saving much money. Expand that to a directional and it still might not save enough.

[complaint_hopeful]

Yes. For most schools the FTE is MUCH lower like your illustration of Clarion.

[Fightingscot82]

They almost have to. My guess is they start sharing online classes across more schools than just the Triads at minimum.

But, I could see a Phase 2 of these Integrations with a new set of schools.

It's interesting that IUP dipped under 10,000 students...because wasn't that the magic number in the law where you couldn't be merged with? Not saying PASSHE would do that with IUP, but who knows? I think we're getting to the point where anything is on the table.

I think, worst case scenario, PASSHE merges everyone into one of two directionals with IUP and WC as hub campuses. Maybe they can force a merger between Cheyney & Lincoln.

A lot more mergers are coming. Might as well get ahead of it and give us time to get it right. Its pretty rare that PASSHE is ahead of the curve.

[Bart]

headcount for each of the system universities with the percentage change from last year:'

Looking at the stats for Clarion, you are right.

https://clarion.edu/about-clarion/of...021_Freeze.pdf

If you look below at a post I made, I counted the FTE students, giving Clarion just above 3000.