(03-12-2021 08:31 PM)OhioBoilermaker Wrote: (03-12-2021 08:13 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: I wish PA would sever itself from Penn State. I’m not against the state-related concept, just the arrangement PSU has.
Why
At the core of it is the redundancies created between Penn State's satellite campuses and the state's PASSHE institutions. And then the resource and quality gap between University Park and the satellite campuses, added with the structure Penn State has built to "protect" University Park from inter-campus transfers (more four-year degree programs at select satellite campuses to expand the 2+2 program, crossed with increased enrollment restrictions into University Park programs).
PSU is competing against PASSHE schools for similar populations. It gets state funding for taking on PA students.
You can't serve two masters. You have PASSHE schools ailing and shrinking with infrastructural issues and challenges (granted, we're seeing some mergers finally coming to fold between the smallest schools) because the state is strapped. Well, it's strapped partly because you have to feed Penn State (including taking on PSU employees into the state retirement system - this is something Temple and Pitt employees do not get to do).
It's debatable whether PSU is really investing in these campuses at any pace or rate it does with Main Campus. You're still paying close to Main Campus prices for the Penn State "name" but a lesser fraction of the experience. Meanwhile, the value of the PASSHE school is there (a considerably cheaper option) but is henpecked to explore and expand its mission and core. What you have are these fourteen PASSHE institutions in varying states of operation (only a few at best remotely doing really well) then coupled with these twenty PSU satellites (some are nothing more than a few paltry buildings). There isn't enough money to go around, and the result is this once-great state higher education system paired with a rudderless PSU model. Quality and value both down.
It's on the state, really. It's taking on essentially two systems, but the biggest resource "gobbler" of the state-related system mirrors the public system at every campus but University Park.
Pitt and Temple (and Lincoln), the other commonwealth schools, didn't over-saturate the area and expand, controlled its size and expenses, and doesn't put its workforce into the public retirement system. I can get onboard with a Penn State like that.