Agreed that it’s sad, but it’s probably best for both parent institutions—things never really seemed to mesh properly, with the promise of two globally important institutions working together not achieving any sort of measurable benefit for the students.
(Glad to see that NUS is keeping the idea of an experiment in a liberal arts education in a Southeast Asian context going for at least a while, though—I’m curious to see what they might do with it now that they’ll only have one institution’s bureaucracy to deal with.)
Muhlenberg doesn’t surprise me as kids from school rarely come back raving about that one - it’s more popular here on cc than my school. Dickinson and Gettysburg both surprise me.
I was particularly surprised by that, considering that I saw a webcast where a Muhlenberg administrator announced they’d met their enrollment target for the fall earlier this summer.
Also: The article was sometimes very clear and sometimes not clear at all about whether it was using pandemic-affected or pre-pandemic years’ numbers, so I couldn’t get a finger on whether the important comparisons really were apples to apples.
I mean, I think it is likely that Pennsylvania LACs and directional publics are facing a crisis. I’m just not convinced that the article’s author described the nature of the crisis at all accurately—it read for all the world like the kind of piece someone who’s shorting a sector of the bond market would write rather than something from a dispassionate observer.
I can believe overall we’re losing students (as a state), but I know our school is growing and needs to figure out (more) new buildings - having built one already not too long ago. That’s not a replacement building, it’s a new one to help house more students and we’re still crowded. Lots of people moving into our area, many from OOS.
IMO consolidation of the state schools is rather meaningless. They aren’t closing any of them. Then too, the author of the article called Penn St a state school in the same section as Kutztown. Uh, they aren’t in the same system at all. There are currently 14 PASSHE schools. Penn St, Pitt, and Temple aren’t in that group. It made me wonder how much the author really knew about colleges.
According the data that Gettysburg has, enrollment has fluctuated over the years, but there is no evidence of dropping enrollment, except in 2020. Dickinson only had a drop in 2019 and 2020, too short to claim that there is a “trend”, especially since one of those years was 2020.
Allegheny College, though, has had a continuous decline in enrollment, from 2,161 in 2013 to 1,667 in 2020.
Another example I have seen referenced by @dfbdfb is Earlham College which this year is welcoming 191 students versus a 2018-19 CDS freshman class size of 271 and a 2016-2017 class size of 355. A 47% drop in student population over 5 years for a school that has been deficit spending for years in spite of severe budget cuts seems challenging but unfortunately not unique.
Most people not from a given state may not know the state universities within a given state are organized. For example, do many people know that Texas public universities are organized into six university systems, and there are three which are not in any of these systems?
Probably only those from Pennsylvania, or those who have read these forums long enough, may realize that Pennsylvania public universities have the CSHE (4 campuses) and PASSHE (14 campuses) systems, with CSHE being considered more of a public / private hybrid situation.
Pennsylvania also has 17 community colleges – but some of the CSHE schools compete with them in having their own community college equivalents (there are 20 Penn State branch campuses that appear to be focused of transfer preparation to the Penn State main campus).
Pennsylvania’s mountainous geography makes it difficult to serve the parts of the state outside of major cities with commute-accessible colleges, compared to some other states.
But if I’m writing an article specifically referencing PA’s colleges, I’d have done research about them to know what I was talking about. Same goes for any state.
Since their data about Gettysburg doesn’t hold up, I’m now thinking it’s just click bait.
Brandman University, a private nonprofit institution in California that serves more than 10,000 students online and at 25 physical locations, will become UMass Global. It will be affiliated with the public university system but governed as a private institution under an independent board of regents.
@MITPhysicsAlum So how does a school like Earlham get out of the vicious cycle of $47mm of cumulative deficit spending which leads to budget cuts with reduced student experience and financial aid which leads to dramatically reduced numbers of students of whom 90% are on FA which reduces income per student? Not to mention they have an attrition rate such that only 2 of 3 students graduates after 6 years.
Earlham has a great tradition and reputation so how do they and others in the same boat survive?
The article below is a year old and things only appear to have gotten more challenging.
The budget shortfall for Guilford is $6M and they fundraised $4M by June 1st. I think their deadline for the other $2M is Jan 31 2022. I am in NC and while my D22 is probably not interested in going to Guilford when I come across an article about them I will check it out. The board initially had a different interim president in there and she wanted to make drastic cuts and layoffs and the alumni and the current faculty and students rose up in protest. They said this is not the Quaker/Guilford way, so they got rid of that interim president and put a long time professor and alum in the roll and they are making good headway against that deficit. I think things are looking much better for them, but they definitely aren’t out of the woods yet.
Sounds like they are in better shape than Earlham. That is a lot of deficit for them.
They might not. As I said, it’s hard. And as you said, there is a vicious cycle.
Guilford spedns $50M a year or so, and has a $70M endowment which they are eating into to operate. Against that, $2M does not go very far.
I think a fair question is should Guilford be allowed to shrink until it vanishes? What’s the difference between Guilford and Pontiac? And what should be the grounds for deciding who stays and who goes? Why Sweet Briar survives and Concordia College Alabama does not?
The headline says cuts caused by corona. I find it to be somewhat disingenuous. Maybe sped-up by corona but not caused.
US enrollment has been declining for years, especially in the rust belt. The schools are aware of this. They also know about the 2026 demographic cliff. Combine these things with the hollowing out of the middle class and it’s not surprising. They didn’t plan accordingly.