DUS isn’t at all like a community college. It’s Penn State’s name for undecided major. DUS students at main campus take the same classes as pre-major students in other Penn State colleges (Engineering, Liberal Arts, Agriculture, etc.) and all students (except for the very few direct entry majors - e.g., Nursing, Architecture), whether in DUS or not, have to meet Entrance to Major requirements to actually be in that major. Some of the commonwealth (branch) campuses do function as high-priced community colleges, but the larger ones, especially Behrend (Erie), Harrisburg, and Altoona are smaller but function as 4-year institutions. I agree that Pennsylvania has far too many colleges/universities, public and private, for the shrinking number of high school graduates. Some more will end up like Cabrini and have to close.
Son goes to Penn state and it’s a community college… but if Penn state fans want to say it’s not so be it… the only school that can get into engineering or business if you can get the GPA needed just like the commonwealth campus. BostonU (BU grad here) calls it CGS and others have different name… your considered rejected by Penn state in the fall admissions numbers .
In the old days undeclared went into the college of liberal arts
Except Undeclared is not Liberal Arts. There are students wondering between CS and IST, for instance, who’d be undeclared. Or simply having no idea because Biological Anthropology, Forensic Science, and Immunology all sound very cool but pretty sure they don’t want to be a History or English major. College of Liberal Arts, especially when it’s not “college of arts&sciences”, and especially when a university has multiple colleges, is not where undeclared students belong. That’s why there’s an “undeclared” option a basically all universities.
Pennsylvania is a concentration of higher ed issues: very high costs at the flagship campuses, poor state or institutional financial aid from these flagships (due to their “state related” status similar to NYS contract colleges - said status being used as an explanation another issue), a large number of private colleges some of which rely exclusively on local HS students, a shrinking teen population, 2 state systems competing (PSU branch campuses, many of which do function as community colleges-cum-overpriced pipelines to the flagship vs. PASSHE schools), and large areas that are low population/difficult to access with no college within commutable distance.
In terms of closings and mergers it’s going to be a harbinger of things to come. I hope the state chambers+governor+various universities work together to avoid a predictable catastrophe.
I’m pretty sure students choosing to apply to DUS and accepted to main campus are considered regularly admitted students to PSU UP. Please cite your reference(s) that they are not. I am not at all a a big Penn State fan; wouldn’t even allow my D17 to apply, knowing that we would never be able to afford it. It isn’t even a reasonable option for many average income instate families, though some families who are Penn State fans choose to take out loans so their children can attend. Pitt at least now matches Pell Grant. I don’t think Penn State has any similar program.
Have you watched how students can change majors to undecided from commonwealth campus and get admitted to UP under DUS? Or the Summer amazing leap? Will keep it to that. This discussion is not for this group… no need to argue after all my son is there and I’ve seen it first had with my eldest… it’s just facts we can accept or argue
so the only thing i could find that mentioned restricted vs unrestricted was from 2021 - they stated 459.3 million restricted and 165.2 million unrestricted so i guess it seems safe, at least on paper.
Keep in mind yeshiva university would be a great example of a university with a valuable asset in being in a major city compared to Golden Gate University. Yeshiva had its 1 billion endowment nearly erased by Madoff and it took them the sale of a chunk of their campus and giving up their medical school to fix the problem. Golden Gate University is the opposite in being in San Francisco where real estate values has collapsed and they can’t sell part of their real estate assets to cover their operations.
Not really true—Bloomfield College (private) was taken over by Montclair State University (public) just very recently. It may be more difficult, but it is completely doable.
If a college closes but still has an endowment, what happens to the assets/cash? Just curious.
Having mostly been a PA resident I’ve watched industries leave. It’s tough but they really just need to rip the band-aid off and close/sell/consolidate schools and move-on.
As a Pitt grad I won’t comment on DUS but Pitt has/had CAS and CGS. CAS is.now Dietrich. CGS always felt more like a CC in Pitt.
Usually college only react after it’s a mess but Marlboro college in Vermont gave its endowment to Emerson after the merge. Emerson created the Marlboro Institute of liberal Arts. Mills college must have given its endowment to Northeastern University but not sure if they created the mills institute as intended before the merger
When newbury college in Boston shutdown they gave their endowment to Boston University to create the newbury center to support first generation students
Whoa! 40% cuts is really big. I agree with some of the people quoted that the conflict in viewpoints between the board and the individuals at the university is definitely problematic. If the board is much more conservative, and the faculty/students are much more progressive, it is sending crossed-signals to families who are trying to decide where their seniors in high school should even consider, much less attend.
look at Seattle Pacific University financials they got a huge hit in tuition in one year. Total tuition for 2022 was 107 million compared to 142 million in 2021. Seems they either tried to discount less and that back fired or they didn’t manage their yield well (at 92% acceptance that’s going to be difficult)
I would suspect that it’s easier for a public U to absorb a private college (as in your example, and the proposed but not implemented annexation of Hampshire College by UMass) than the other way around. But maybe there’s a way for the reverse to work as well.
Northeastern acquired all assets and liabilities of Mills. The Mills Institute was created with a $20 million grant from Northeastern. @chmcnm was wondering what happens when a college simply closes without a merger.
In my state, all transfers of endowments and other funds when a non-profit goes under or gets acquired is a decision made by the Attorney General. The institutions don’t get to pick and choose which assets and which liabilities go where. We’ve had many instances where payroll taxes or employee insurance premiums have not been paid due to cash flow issues. The Attorney General is the one who points out to the principals that those legal obligations get paid first before a single dime can go from one entity to the other.
An organization in distress has likely held off on paying vendors… and before the mess begins, all legitimate outstanding claims have to get paid.
So in the situations you are all describing, I’m betting there is significant legal oversight as to “who gets the endowment”.
I hope there’s oversight but the pessimist in me sees “Larry the Liquidator” scooping up distressed schools and raiding the endowment for big profits.
For public universities, the best measure is enrollment and the budget they get from the state, the the budget is often determined by th eenrollement. UCF has barely a $200 million endowment, with almost 59,000 undergraduates. They are not in any danger of closing in the next few decades.
On the other hand, UMN Morris is in danger of being closed. Not because they have a tiny endowment, but because their enrollment has dropped 50% in the past 10 years.
The state legislature are the ones who decide the fate of a public university in that state, and they usually look at enrollment trends, not endowments, when deciding whether to close a college.of course there are also issues like the charter of the college, and existing state legislation regarding colleges.
My main point is that, for public colleges, the endowment is not the most important factor in figuring out whether it will remain fully functional in the next few years.