There’s already a PSU “world campus” ie., online degrees, as well as a fairly broad choice of online classes for gen eds, this on top of 14 PASSHE campuses, plus after cuts and campus closures 3 Pitt campuses, 3 Temple campuses, 19 PSU campuses (and a literal hundred private colleges). It’s the layer cake of it all that’s 
. In particular, there shouldn’t be overlap between Penn State and Pitt branches, and between branches and PASSHE. There should be a commutable college for all+available financial aid but having a couple public colleges bunched together and competing against each other makes no sense (in particular Passhe and PSU branches).
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Agree. Many of the Penn State branches are pretty close to several other colleges, either in the Passhe system or private colleges. I live closest to the York branch. My 10th grade daughter has performed in community programs at their Pullo Center. My 12th grade daughter has attended musical performances there. She has friends currently attending or set to attend this coming fall. It’s a nice campus and I hate to see it close and wonder what will become of it. But, just a few miles down the road (on the same road!) is York College, which also has a lot of local students commute to it. And, there is a small campus for HACC (Harrisburg Area Community College) in York. We also have a bunch of other colleges within an easy 30-45 minute drive that a lot of locals attend (Millersville, Elizabethtown, Messiah, Lancaster Bible, Franklin and Marshall, Dickinson, Harrisburg University, and Penn State Harrisburg), and even more about an hour away, both in PA and MD. So many options in such a small area. Wilkes is in a similar situation with several schools in a small radius. When you have that many options in such a close area, they are all fighting for the same local students. I read that York has also had a steady decline in student enrollment, and local rental pricing is outrageous, so it is mainly a commuter school. Meanwhile York College just announced they are building a new dorm to add to their on campus housing options. I don’t know how well York College is doing financially, but wonder if Penn State York closes if York College might try to absorb part of the campus and buildings since it is so close.
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The PSU Commonwealth campuses are branch or regional campuses of PSU. Only a handful of them have ever had a large enrolment and offered anything resembling a true college experience. In the past their draw was the ability to earn a Penn State degree rather than a degree from the PASSHE schools. Tuition at the PSU branch campuses is something like twice that of the PASSHE schools and most had facilities inferior to the PASSHE schools.
The SUNY schools are independent of the SUNY universities even though they are under the SUNY umbrella.
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Or a commuting allowance or reciprocity with border states.
PSU Fayette is probably 45 minutes from the nearest PASSHE school using toll roads. I have no idea what the nearest school east of Fayette would be. They offer 4 year degrees I think but no dorms.
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Psu Fayette is also about 30miles from WVU (toll roads, 40mn) so a reciprocity system similar to the one with YSU in Ohio and the closer PA counties would make sense.
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Bird’s-eye view: Pennsylvania’s higher ed was always well meaning but long-term unsustainable. My early morning musings, unsubstantiated by anything other than some strong tea: It was the only geographically majority Appalachian state that also included some wealthy and large urban areas (Philly and Pittsburgh) and was rurally populous though dispersed resource industry communities in the mountains, and if not exactly “progressive,” at least not regressive. And thus funded a truly astoundingly thorough system to provide mega-accessible higher education to all of their citizens. Other Appalachian states either had no significant urban centers /wealth(Compare: W. Virginia, Kentucky) or the Appalachian region was geographically distant from population centers, and poor, and thus easy to ignore and underfund (Virginia, Tennessee, N. Carolina, Ohio).
It’s kind of amazing to imagine the social optimism that led to all of those campuses being created.
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Bacone College (an Indigenous-serving institution in Oklahoma) had attempted to stay open while undergoing bankruptcy reorganization, but it has been ordered into Chapter 7 liquidation after things were uncovered like the acting president of the college using the college’s accounts to pay for personal expenses.
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What is the best way to check on the financial health of a school? We have visited several small schools on the east coast and a couple I worry about their finances. One in particular is St Michaels in VT. Their enrollment is steadily declining and they had employees and their families living in some of the on campus apartments. They also rent out an entire dorm to a junior hockey team. My son liked a lot about the school but it just made the campus vibe feel strange and made me wonder if they are going to survive.
I agree that St. Michael’s is in trouble.
For colleges in general search for Forbes 2024 College Financial Grades on this site or on Google.
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It’s listed as a “C” which obviously isn’t great but there are tons of schools with lower grades. For example, Fordham has a “C-” but don’t think they are going under any time soon. Wondering if there are other sources to look at.
I think that St. Michael’s problem is enrollment. When the number of college applicants is at an historic high, their enrollment is half what it used to be. What’s going to happen when the number of available high school graduates begins to decline as it does next year?
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Forbes’s financial grades have their issues and are not, I agree, completely reliable—but they’re a good vibe check in the vast majority of cases.
Endowment (and, separately, endowment per student) is a good easy to find measure.
And steadily declining enrollment is a huge red flag.
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i looked at forbes, and then this too: How Financially Resilient Is Your College? | Bain & Company
They don’t seem always in alignment, but it is something (the link includes budget deficit and enrollment trends) you can play around with trends too..kind of fun if nothing else (ok, I think it is kind of fun;)
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A few different things, some of which have already been mentioned.
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Check the Forbes grades for multiple years. Sometimes there can be a big swing from one year o the next. I think that seeing the trend of the grade has a significant amount of utility, besides just what the grade happens to be.
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Look at collegetables.info. It has an astounding amount of data for a school.
It used to show revenue, expenses, and assets over more than a decade and made comparisons with its athletic conference and Carnegie classification.
When I checked today for St. Michael’s it didn’t have that same level of detail. But on the home page when I clicked on Institution Health and looked up the school, it did have the amount of revenue from government appropriations, government grants and contracts, private gifts and contracts, and tuition and fees as well as the undergraduate enrollment trend. Considering the changes that have been happening under the new administration, this can be very useful since I’m unsure whether other sources (like Forbes or Bain) are looking at this level of detail:
Of course, the Institution Finances part would be great to see, but I’m not seeing it today (at least not for St. Michael’s).
- Jeff Selingo’s list of college buyers and sellers would be an interesting data point to consider as well. If a school is an extreme buyer (i.e. really big discounts for the majority of its students), and it doesn’t have a good financial health grade or a not so big endowment, then alarm bells would probably start going off.
All in all, I probably wouldn’t look at any one factor in isolation, but try and get a more global sense of what direction the school is heading in.
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Of course, you could also use this to do what my family did with our kids, which is to look for colleges that are on the “buyers” list but that are also well capitalized, and let the Big Merit Aid™ offers appear!
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Here’s a WSJ profile on Western Illinois University, it’s declining enrollment, and the impact on the local town, Macomb. Speaks to what some other towns are/may be facing.
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The article notes that there is a flight to quality with state flagships booming enrollment.
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Of students choosing to enter college, more of them are aiming for prestigious universities, believing those diplomas will get them better jobs, said Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University who studies higher education. “It’s a flight to quality,” he said.
I will contend that it’s a flight to perceived quality.
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I think it depends on what is defined by quality. For instance, for a student interested in research. there are likely more research opportunities at the state flagship than a regional though it may be more difficult to gain one of these research positions.
There are often more majors, a bigger campus with more to do. The state flagship will often also offer sports, Greek life etc that may not be available at other campuses. The regional may also offer some benefits such as more access to faculty, often more personalized attention etc so the quality may not perceived so much as being the preference in the eye of the beholder.
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