If the state follows one of the recommendations in a new study of the State System of Higher Education, your child could be going to college at the University of Pittsburgh-IUP.
The RAND Corporation study, which was commissioned by the state legislature, offers five options for fixing the struggling State System, one of which is dismantling it and making its universities branch campuses of Penn State, Pitt, or Temple. RAND presented the study yesterday to the state Legislative Budget & Finance Committee. The options range from keeping the State System but changing its governance, including eliminating each school’s Council of Trustees, to a variety of consolidation choices, two of which would essentially make State System schools branch campuses of Penn State, Pitt, or Temple.
The RAND Corporation’s Charles Goldman told the committee that the options do not include closing any schools because that would be too complicated.
Here are the five options:
- Keeping the State System the way it is but changing its governance, including eliminating each school’s Council of Trustees.
- Keeping the State System governance as is but consolidating some of the weaker universities with ones that are more viable financially, dropping the number of schools from fourteen to as few as five.
- Eliminating the State System and converting the stronger universities to state-related status, while absorbing some of the weaker schools.
- Placing the State System and all its schools under the management of Penn State, Pitt or Temple.
- Abolishing the State System and make its universities branch campuses of Penn State, Pitt, or Temple.
The report was not well-received by APSCUF, the faculty union, nor by some of the State System’s leaders. Interim Chancellor Karen Whitney was skeptical that placing schools under the leadership of the state-related universities would address the State System’s problems, while a very angry APSCUF President Kenneth Mash accused “some senators and some representatives” of not believing in public higher education and being on a mission to “take down” the State System schools.
The House and Senate education committees will hold a joint hearing on the study on Monday.
