The Ga. Southern - Armstrong merger was one of many university/college consolidations in Georgia-- I have a family member who is employed at one of the affected universities-- but one thing they made sure to do was not to merge *any* of their HBCUs.
Why does USM still exist?
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It's coming. May be a ways down the road, but if nothing else, I think you'll see a shake up in the private colleges. Mississippi College I guess has a niche (a very expensive one) as a school where there is still a religious influence. Millsaps has some loyal followers, but are people going to keep spending a lot of money to go there? I'm assuming their endowment isn't big enough for it to not matter. Same with Belhaven? Is it recognizably religious? Why would people go there as they become cost conscious when choosing a college? And what is the market for WIlliam Carey? I get that these places offer different experiences that people like, but are they going to be willing to continue to pay a premium for degrees that are at best indistinguishable and at worst less marketable than the public university options?
On the public side, there may be nothing more than consolidation of backoffice support, but I think that will happen too. Not sure if it will have a lot of impact. I'm not sure the back office stuff is very expensive compared to everything else running a college/university requires.
When considering the entire package, yeah, we have it pretty easy. I've lived in a lot of places. Many hidden costs that most of these 'rankings' do not take into account.
Interesting to know. Never really thought about it, but I know a good number of people that have gone to MC, but zero to my knowledge that went to Belhaven.
We have it easy compared to a lot of places because we have a middling tax burden, and so lots of places have a higher burden, and some places have a lower burden. There is probably more distance between us and the higher burden states than there is between us and the lowest burden states.
An easy way to save money at the JuCo level is to do away/cut back on athletics. No other state tries to field as many JuCo football programs as we do (football is a very expensive sport), maybe cut back to one program in the North, Central and South (or some similar configuration).
The problem is, when you talk about "save money" is that you are simply looking at a budget number on the school's spreadsheet.
Before you cut these programs, I would want to know exactly what you're going to do with that money, and how it affects the state of Mississippi. Then, you can make an educated decision. Do those football teams actually lose money? Did you consider the salaries of the coaching staff? Are those football players staying in the state and getting jobs? All that plays into it.
"Save money" isn't a good enough decision. The government's job is to put its money into circulation for good use and for the betterment of whoever it is governing. It's not trying to save and turn a profit. You certainly don't want to waste it, but that's why the options should be presented rather than just "save that money". That's tea party bullcheet.
So..$100mill, I believe, will build about 30 or so miles of two lane rural highway. Assuming most of that $100mil gets past the MDOT power brokers.
Alabama has a lot more than 3 community colleges (some in this list may be private based on tuition): https://www.usnews.com/education/community-colleges/alabama?page=2
Reasonable suggestions, but I suspect the community colleges (called junior colleges at the time) were formed when transportation was not nearly so easy as it is now. And as you know, once you start something it's incredibly difficult to stop it. People get to thinking of it as an entitlement (like SS and a lot of other government programs, for example).
I don't know about the others, but I do know there would be a lot of howling from the W alumnae if a merger with MSU was ever tried. They were pretty vocal when men were admitted (and with good reason). Tradition and such.
I don't know about the others, but I do know there would be a lot of howling from the W alumnae if a merger with MSU was ever tried. They were pretty vocal when men were admitted (and with good reason). Tradition and such.
Alabama actually went the other way some years ago. Athens College was a parochial school but was in financial trouble so the state took it over and it's now Athens State University (called a university even though it's only the junior and senior years, and as far as I know, doesn't offer any PhDs). UAH at the very beginning was only a graduate school. So Alabama has in the fairly recent past added colleges, not closed them. There may be other examples as well, but those are two local ones.
School district consolidation can and has been done in Mississippi. Back in the 1960s, maybe 1970, Lauderdale County got rid of all the small schools and consolidated into, I believe, 3 larger schools that ran through high school. I suppose it worked out OK ... I haven't been back there for any period of time since it happened. I don't remember there being a huge controversy surrounding the consolidations, but there must have been some.
According to Wikipedia, Jackson has 54 schools, around 24,000 students, and 5,000 employees.
Aren't the number of schools and the size of the staff quite high for that many students?
MS, the poorest state in the nation, is supporting 14 JuCo football programs, Minnesota (10), Kansas (8) Arizona (7) and Texas (6) are the only states remotely close to supporting that many teams. No other southern state has more than one (AL and LA have none).
What are we as a state getting from spending this amount of money on football (I'm picking on football because it costs so much to run a program)?
Over the years our out of state competitors have used MS JuCo football programs as a farm system. Sure, we have gotten players out our JuCos, but we've also subsidized the talent of many out of state programs on the backs of our taxpayers.
I've been to one JuCo game and it was very sparsely attended, so I'd be shocked if anyone made the argument JuCo football is self-supporting.
I should have clarified: consolidation/merging of our public universities
Millsaps is interesting to me. I think we’d all agree they’re the most prestigious out of the private universities in the state, but they’re struggling enrollment wise. Seem to remember reading that they were adding sports to boost enrollment.
Carey might be doing the best out of all the private schools. They have a Coast campus now along with their campus in Hattiesburg.
Millsaps is interesting to me. I think we’d all agree they’re the most prestigious out of the private universities in the state, but they’re struggling enrollment wise. Seem to remember reading that they were adding sports to boost enrollment.
Carey might be doing the best out of all the private schools. They have a Coast campus now along with their campus in Hattiesburg.
Was that before or after you almost lost your SACS accreditation? (Sorry, I couldn't resist.
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I don't see how cutting JUCO football is going to fix the situation at all. Our community college system is one of the most expansive in the nation, especially for the population of our state. They are critical recruiting mechanisms to try and attract large corporations to invest in Mississippi and open up shop in our state. They use these community colleges as a direct link for training their future workforce. This has been done in many parts of the state and it remains an option that gives MS a chance at attracting investment.
The reason we are even looking at options to cut back is because funding education has never been a priority in our state. You remember when the legislatOrs met in Jackson for that "special session" last year to decide where to spend the BP/Lottery/Sports Betting money? How much of that was given to education? It was such a large pot of money that these rednecks got off their ***, put down the bottle of Jim Beam, and hauled the pickup to Jackson on their days off. Nobody seemed to care that such a small fraction of this was allocated towards education. But "that's Mississippi" I guess.
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Millsaps is the most prestigious I guess, but it's still not exactly a brand name. People from there think highly of it. I'm not sure it has any purchase anymore outside of alumni. I really don't understand how they or a lot of private schools will survive. Just no value proposition to offer.
Carey is being smart and focusing on a lot of high value professional schools that they can make money off of, DO and pharmacy primarily. Somewhat stupid for none of the State universities to try to fill that niche. Don't know that we need more pharmacists, but we definitely could use more primary care physicians, so we could have/should have been doing a state DO school. Could have kept it maybe a little more affordable for the students.
I still think the scenario that makes sense is for William Carey to be rolled into USM. Selfishly I wish the undergrad would be rolled into USM and the professional schools rolled into MSU, so we'd have a presence in Starkville, Meridian, and the Coast.
Why would be be building more two lane rural highway?
We are something like $25B dollars in debt if you assume we are actually going to honor our pension obligations as the currently exist (which admittedly is a questionable assumption). We need to be squeezing every dime of state spending we can. Or I guess alternatively we could just acknowledge we are going to default and try to wring as much out of bondholders and PERS workers before they figure out that's our plan.
Move State to Hattiesburg?
Well, at least folks would start going to football games there.
Consolidation brings minimal savings to the state
Superintendents are paid out of local funds as are most other administrators and all support staff. The money that the state contributes is based on enrollment mostly for teacher salaries. Communities that don’t consolidate use more local funds to make up for shortfalls in state funding
Superintendents are paid out of local funds as are most other administrators and all support staff. The money that the state contributes is based on enrollment mostly for teacher salaries. Communities that don’t consolidate use more local funds to make up for shortfalls in state funding
Right. Cutting to three jucos in the state with programs would be the death knell for all programs-- which is pretty similar to what happened in Arizona last year. There are schools that apparently lose money (Itawamba is mentioned in the SI.com article in the thread I linked earlier this year) but they could be considered investments to attract more people to colleges.
Are you smoking crack? Only a minuscule amount of non-athlete students are attracted to JuCo because of sports. Additionally, our JC system is not some shining success, we don't get near enough return on what we invest in it. I'm all for expanding needed vo tech programs and possibly academic, but sports at the JuCo level gets us nearly nothing for the investment, it is a very poor return.
We are the poorest state in the nation, why, because we keep doing the same things that continue not to work (like putting precious resources into JuCo football). Even a state as big and wealthy as Texas doesn't try to run a JuCo football league.
You obviously don't know Jack about Mississippi's Community College System.
Among the non-athlete students attracted to junior colleges because of sports are music majors/people interested in being in bands, physical therapy majors, people who want to be managers, students who are involved in the arts (photography)-- just to name a few.
Mississippi's community college system was recognized as the top community college system in 2015 by WalletHub (link). In a state where Bad Decisions are the norm, the community colleges are one of the few Smart Decisions the state has made.
The great majority of athletics scholarships granted to students attending Mississippi community colleges go to Mississippians (at least 80 percent). So the investment is made in Mississippians by Mississippians via Community Colleges.
And you are also partly wrong when it comes to Texas community colleges. There are several community colleges (though less than in years past) do compete in football: The Southwest Junior College Football Conference.
It would seem you know even less. Do you really need a website that doesn't do more than produce clickbait to substantiate your opinion of the MS JuCo system? History should do that. For my 50 plus years, the state has poured unknown millions into JuCo football, we have virtually nothing to show for it.
Photography and Music Majors, get out of here with that, we need JuCos pumping out Diesel Mechanics, Welders, HVAC and Construction Management technicians. Anyone smart enough to get into PT school doesn't need to go to JuCo.
You think JuCo sports attract other students? The EMCC football team has won five JuCo National Championships since 2011 and had its own series (Last Chance U), guess how much enrollment increased in 2016 as a result? Negative 6%.
And next time you may want to read your links before posting, Texas with a population of 29 Million (vs. MS's population of 3 million) has less than half the JuCo football programs we support.
Take the JuCo money that is going into football and beef up our dual enrollment/credit programs in High Schools and JCs, Mississippi is already woefully behind in this, but that is certainly something that would be a much more beneficial expenditure of our limited funds.
You didn’t talk about increases in FTE student population, you wrote about attracting non-athletes through sports. Make up your mind what the point you want to make is before you argue something.
If it wasn’t for athletics, FTE enrollment would be MUCH worse. So, yes. JUCO Athletics attract non-athletic students.
And community colleges *do* of course train students in career programs— they are after all the designated workforce development agency for the state. Continental Tire has the new plant in Clinton and the workforce folks at Hinds Community College are a factor.
Smart students no matter the academic program that they are enrolled in might be best advised in many cases to go to community colleges as freshmens (yep, Stans taught me English) as opposed to going to 4-year colleges straight out of high school. Tuition is cheaper, students can often get scholarships at community colleges, and if they apply themselves and do the right things then they can get scholarships when they transfer to four-year schools— and some students get band scholarships at places like MSU.
Dual enrollment is almost old hat at universities and community colleges. I know folks whose children are in classes as well as people who teach dual enrollment classes.
Edit to add: Since you dislike the community colleges talking well about themselves, here’s a news story from gulflive (that’s the Pascagoula newspaper) site from 2015 about the Mississippi Community Colleges having the top system in the nation: Link.
If it wasn’t for athletics, FTE enrollment would be MUCH worse. So, yes. JUCO Athletics attract non-athletic students.
And community colleges *do* of course train students in career programs— they are after all the designated workforce development agency for the state. Continental Tire has the new plant in Clinton and the workforce folks at Hinds Community College are a factor.
Smart students no matter the academic program that they are enrolled in might be best advised in many cases to go to community colleges as freshmens (yep, Stans taught me English) as opposed to going to 4-year colleges straight out of high school. Tuition is cheaper, students can often get scholarships at community colleges, and if they apply themselves and do the right things then they can get scholarships when they transfer to four-year schools— and some students get band scholarships at places like MSU.
Dual enrollment is almost old hat at universities and community colleges. I know folks whose children are in classes as well as people who teach dual enrollment classes.
Edit to add: Since you dislike the community colleges talking well about themselves, here’s a news story from gulflive (that’s the Pascagoula newspaper) site from 2015 about the Mississippi Community Colleges having the top system in the nation: Link.
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So, since FTE at the most successful JuCo football program in the COUNTRY is down significantly (in the midst of a dominating run) that means football attracts students? Huh? Read that out loud and let it soak in. Outside the JuCo system, no one, and I mean absolutely no one, cares about JuCo athletics other than coaches at four-year colleges who may want to recruit.
Being that I have two college-aged children and having toured colleges from Texas to GA, our public high schools, even our most successful, are far behind those in neighboring states, even AL. Talking to parents from other states, there is a heck of a lot more we can do with dual enrollment....there is a LOT of meat left on that bone.
If you read that any educational system in MS is top in the nation, just ask yourself, where's the payoff?
There are ripple effects that go beyond recruiting by 4-year college coaches.
You’ve mentioned the six percent decrease in enrollment at East Mississippi in 2016 (actually not quite six but it can be rounded up to that figure— I checked the numbers on the state board site).
And I’ve mentioned the auxiliary organizations previously— band, cheerleaders, student managers for sports and the band to give just a few examples. If not for athletics, these organizations which attract students wouldn’t exist.
If there’s no sports, why is there a need for band or managers or cheerleaders or student managers?
What you’re advocating will decrease enrollment by up to three times as much (using your example of East Mississippi: It most likely will be less but I’m going by a rough guesstimate of students enrolled in affected auxiliary groups and then subtracting them from the enrollment).
Essentially, you’re wanting to kill not just colleges that are very successful but also the state’s workforce development agencies.
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Postscript: Regarding dual enrollment, I don’t know how much meat is on that bone but bear in mind community colleges are open enrollment institutions. Accordingly, there are students who don’t or can’t take advantage of dual enrollment because it costs money that their families may not afford or want to spend in the poorest state in the nation. With that stated, I’m admittedly curious about Tate Reeves’ proposed Ready to Work program (link) and what role it may play in community colleges.
You’ve mentioned the six percent decrease in enrollment at East Mississippi in 2016 (actually not quite six but it can be rounded up to that figure— I checked the numbers on the state board site).
And I’ve mentioned the auxiliary organizations previously— band, cheerleaders, student managers for sports and the band to give just a few examples. If not for athletics, these organizations which attract students wouldn’t exist.
If there’s no sports, why is there a need for band or managers or cheerleaders or student managers?
What you’re advocating will decrease enrollment by up to three times as much (using your example of East Mississippi: It most likely will be less but I’m going by a rough guesstimate of students enrolled in affected auxiliary groups and then subtracting them from the enrollment).
Essentially, you’re wanting to kill not just colleges that are very successful but also the state’s workforce development agencies.
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Postscript: Regarding dual enrollment, I don’t know how much meat is on that bone but bear in mind community colleges are open enrollment institutions. Accordingly, there are students who don’t or can’t take advantage of dual enrollment because it costs money that their families may not afford or want to spend in the poorest state in the nation. With that stated, I’m admittedly curious about Tate Reeves’ proposed Ready to Work program (link) and what role it may play in community colleges.
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That is what I am referring to when I reference their DO program, although I may be screwing up the terminology. I think they grant doctorates of osteopathy or osteopathic medicine and are referred to as DOs rather than MDs