This will be interesting to watch in Pa. Community college sharing a campus with a regional Penn State campus.
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But then aren’t PSU branches kind of like community colleges, but more expensive and focused on transfer to PSU main?
Colocating colleges is not unheard of. In Denver, there are two four year public universities and a community college colocated on a campus. The Claremont Colleges are a collection of colocated private colleges.
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Really? UMich branch campuses aren’t considered as feeders to main campus.
Different states have different models.
To give you whole nother one, back in 1986 (IIRC) Alaska discontinued its community colleges* and turned them into “community campuses” of the state’s three public universities. The community campuses are component parts of the universities but are (simplified, but essentially) limited to lower-division courses.
*With one exception, the one in Valdez, which remained a separate community college into it became a community campus just a few years ago. No, I don’t know why.
It sounds like the Penn State model at first, except that the community campuses aren’t accredited separately from the larger institutions, which turns out to have fairly sizable ramifications in terms of governance and budgets and such.
Penn State has a different model from University of Michigan. While the various University of Michigan campuses are complete standalone universities, Penn State branch campuses mostly offer few bachelor’s degree programs of their own, while offering frosh/soph course work to transfer to Penn State main (or sometimes some other branch campus) in a 2+2 arrangement. You can see Penn State Shenango’s offerings here: Degrees and Academic Programs | Penn State Shenango . It offers 12 bachelor’s degree majors, 5 associates degree majors, and frosh/soph course work for 275 2+2 majors.
The closest analog of the Penn State branch campuses to other states is that they are like specialized community colleges focused on transfer preparation to Penn State main, at higher cost than typical community colleges.
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Hodges University in Florida used to be known as International college closing 2024
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There’s a story in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education on the problem of college presidents not being told how bad finances are until after they come on the job (paywalled).
That’s bad enough. But some of the stories in it go beyond that into seriously crazy territory. Consider the following (emphasis added), about Finlandia University:
Timothy Pinnow arrived to lead the university the summer before its closure. He quickly discovered that the balanced budget the board had promised him depended on 20-percent enrollment growth, when it had been losing students for years…But that is not what ultimately sank Finlandia. Almost the entire campus had been put up as collateral for loans taken out in the 1990s, and no current administrators knew about it.
Like, wait, what?!?
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Holy cow! I did find an article from 2015 with a list of schools on the federal watchlist due to financial concerns (Federal Student Aid list). So clearly the issues were longstanding. It sounds like the school was mismanaged for a long time.
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Didn’t the Board know about it though?
It defies belief, so much so that if it’s true it’s no wonder the school closed, it was being run by a bunch of idiots.
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Seems Union Institute & University is next headed for closure
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Unpaywalled link: Unpleasant Surprises
Given the potential for issues at struggling universities, I would advise anyone taking these roles to put in some sort of language that would pay them an agreed amount if they discover financial arrangements not disclosed during the negotiation process. If the school won’t do it… You don’t want the job.
This is going to happen more and more in the coming years.
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An update on a troubled public institution: New Jersey City University will be overseen by a state-appointed monitor.
It’s not fully out of the woods yet, but it sounds like the state wants to make sure it continues to exist, though with additional oversight to make sure the mismanagement that led to the crisis can’t reoccur.
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I went to Penn State and my child is there now. DUS is absolutely not a community college. It’s simply starting undecided and is a pathway into virtually any major on campus including engineering, computer science and those in Smeal business college. My daughter was a high stats kid and would have been accepted regardless but was unsure of what she wanted to study so she went in undeclared/DUS and is now in the college of IST.
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Fall semester cancelled at Union University Ohio. Seems they are heading to closure
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How awful for the students.
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SUNY Potsdam
https://www.timesunion.com/education/article/suny-potsdam-president-announces-cuts-keep-18374248.php
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Wonder how that will impact the cross registration agreements with the other schools in that area. One of the big selling points for my D when we toured Clarkson was that she’d be able to take music classes at Potsdam. Cross Registration | Clarkson University
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This will be interesting to watch - in a “rich” state with a robust higher ed system.
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They appear to be taking a similar approach as WVU has taken for its budget woes. Cuts and layoffs including foreign languages.
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