The Case Of Consolidation In The Pennsylvania State System

The college model is broken, and colleges across the United States are working hard to develop models that encourage higher enrollment, higher student achievement, and economic efficiency to ensure institutional sustainability.

I recently wrote about a new initiative by a group of small humanities colleges to share courses and expand their curriculum in a cost-effective way. Many state higher education systems want to follow the example of Georgia, which has consolidated eight of its 35 universities into four universities since 2013 and further reduced the size of its system to currently 26 universities. We are now hearing of consolidation proposals in Vermont, Oregon and Connecticut and expect more to follow.

This week I write about the efforts of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher, (PASSHE), a group of 14, four-year regional full-time universities that have been out of matriculations since 2010 and have since spent an average of $ 40 million on their reserves annually, according to one Analysis carried out in 2018 will make the system bankrupt by 2027. Dan Greenstein, the system’s chancellor, said the state system is “bleeding cash to death.” As Greenstein looks to the future, he is focused on reinventing PASSHE to not only be financially viable, but most importantly to meet the needs of all students.

“Our goal is simple,” said Greenstein. “It is designed to ensure that Pennsylvania’s public higher education system provides affordable, quality, job-related education to all students regardless of their zip code; To pursue vibrant educational activities that communities depend on in each of our universities; and evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of our students and their employers. ”

PASSHE schools

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The proposed solution, which the Board of Governors will vote on July 14-15, is to reduce the number of schools in the system from 14 to 10 by integrating three of the schools in the west – California, Clarion, and Edinboro – and three the schools in the Northeast – Lock Haven, Mansfield and Bloomsburg – are moving into two new regional universities. The decision as to which schools to consolidate was determined by the data and included their geographic proximity, financial health, financial projections, and mission focus. They wanted the integrated schools to be partners and not hierarchical, and they wanted the heads of the schools to be integrated to be able to work together. The planning effort was supported by Baker Tilly, a leading CPA consultancy whose college practice has worked with more than 400 clients in the United States

Clarion Carlson Library

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“Today’s student is very different from the student 10 years ago,” says Christine Smith, general manager at Baker Tilly. “While efficiency and savings will definitely materialize, the real opportunity lies in reshaping approaches and leveraging best practices across campus to really put the evolving needs of students first.”

The ambitious goals for this new configuration are designed to improve access and success for students. To achieve this, the system plans to reallocate enrollment by 2026, realizing administrative savings of approximately 20%, or $ 24 million, compared to current enrollment and spending levels at these six facilities. Other goals worth striving for include reducing the cost of completing a bachelor’s degree by 25%, primarily through reducing the time to graduate, increasing enrollment, increasing student diversity, increasing career orientation, and more.

These findings rely on curricular integration between schools to provide students with more program choice by expanding the curriculum and offering additional options to meet the needs of staff targeting students beyond traditional ages, as well as the general education curriculum streamline. This integration will make it possible to maintain many small programs that are not currently enrolled on any of the campuses but can be retained if shared by all students at the new universities. Additionally, the new entities are expected to offer certificates and stackable credentials.

Clarion students

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In addition to the curricular initiatives, a lot of time and effort is devoted to reducing administrative costs. The new units will have three presidents and three vice presidents to only have one for each new university. Efficiencies will also be achieved through shared services that will benefit the new entities through the consolidation of financial operations, human resources and institutional research. These increases in efficiency also include the integration of IT systems in most areas. Surveys among students, lecturers and employees at the six institutions showed that the Northeast region also identified career services as well as the areas mentioned above, and the West identified the registrar as activities to be administered centrally. It is planned to reinvest the saved funds in initiatives to increase student success such as study interventions, student advice, tutoring and mentoring programs, which should increase loyalty and thus contribute to further enrollment gains at the universities.

It was not easy to get here and started with a major review of the state system in 2016, which resulted in a redesign of the system based on three main principles: ensuring student success; leverage the strengths of the university and transform the governance / leadership structure that ultimately led to this plan. Key integration criteria ensured that the plan responded to local economic development needs and had the potential to help more students and expand into new markets. The following seven integration assumptions were made in the development of the two new universities:

1. A leadership team

2. A single faculty and staff

3. A single program array

4. A unified strategy for registration management

5. A single, combined budget

6. Maintenance of the six physical campuses

7. An accredited institution with a reporting relationship from the Chancellor to the Board of Directors

The process was labor intensive, with more than 250 working groups in total and involving all constituencies and thousands of people. Baker Tilly helped manage the process and provided much of the critical analysis on economic impact, degrees and online degrees, impact on athletics, and more.

The process was guided by the intended results / metrics and appears to have been extremely transparent, although this assessment is not shared by some in the system, as mentioned in many comments. On the PASSHE website you will find all the important documents, metrics and comments that were received during the process.

Despite the consultation process up to this point, there are still objections to this proposal. While listening to the Board of Governors’ special workshop on June 30th and reading many of the comments posted on the PASSHE website, there are four overarching themes for the objection: There are those who don’t want change and believe that financial bottlenecks can go through more government resources are resolved; there are those who don’t want anything to change until everything is well specified; there are those who don’t want these changes because some people will lose their jobs; and some are against the fact that the expansion of the curriculum will include the provision of some courses and programs online. Higher education is constantly challenged by powerful forces resisting change and unwilling to take the risks that change; We have to overcome this if our industry is to thrive, and this system will certainly need change if it is to be financially sustainable in the future.

Is This the Right Solution? is it enough to provide the best educational opportunities for Pennsylvania students? One can start with the question of whether Pennsylvania needs three higher education systems – the community college system, the state-related system consisting of the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Temple University and Lincoln University, and PASSHE? Probably not, but considering the challenges of making these changes within just one system certainly points to the difficulty of considering much larger changes, although there could certainly be a more rational system with a lower price to the state as a whole. If you just look at the PASSHE system, do these changes go far enough? Why aren’t all back office functions across all schools integrated in the system? Why is there no curricular integration across all schools, at least in some areas? Let’s hope that this is the first step towards a more rationalization of the processes in the system and an expansion of the possibilities for the students.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/the-case-of-consolidation-in-the-pennsylvania-state-system/