It is happening in Pennsylvania.

https://www.wgal.com/article/pennsylvania-universities-ar...

In Ohio, the most likely merger is KSU to take over Akron as its urban campus. This has been proposed on and off since the 1960s. Time is ripe.

Again, I ask, what do you save? What is that cost benefit?

Administration overhead. Not having two of everything: 2 history departments, 2 business schools, 2 nursing colleges and on and on and on. Not to mention that you don't have needless competition and empire building between two schools that are nine miles apart.

Akron and Toledo should have never been absorbed into the state system as independent universities. Rhodes did it because he had the populist notion of a four year state university within fifty miles of every Ohioan. Millett (his Regents Chair and a former Fiami Prez) wanted it because he felt that more schools offering more grad/research programs would cut off OSU at the knees and allow Miami to distinguish itself.

All in all, it was horrible public policy. At the same time, California was building the global gold standard of a state university system that was both high quality and affordable by doing the exact opposite: making things highly structured and regulated and forcing schools to stay in their lane, eliminate empire building and internal competition.

You are still going to have heads of departments because you have campuses that are miles and miles apart. You actually create more mid level management. Only savings would be to actually close the schools.

Reading about the Pennsylvania consolidations, it sure sounds like there's a lot of administrative savings. Each group of three schools being consolidated will have a single President, a single student support services staff, a single academic advisory staff, career counseling staff, etc. etc.

My sense is that there's a lot of savings to be had related to non academic staff. Given the administrative bloat in higher ed, that seems like a good thing.

The merging colleges are only 60 to 90 minutes apart (except Cali) - so expect some consolidation of instructors as well -- especially with the continuing comfort in incorporating online.

Came across some really surprising data while trying to find the graduation rate for Ohio football players.

Of the 11 universities nationwide with the worst overall graduation rates (for all students) 2 of them are Ohio University campuses. The Southern Campus graduates just 13.7% of enrollees, and the Chillicothe campus graduates just 15.6%.

That seems shockingly low. What am I missing about those campuses? Is there some other purpose they're serving that's not reflected in graduation rates?