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I can think of a few instances when a private school went public, principally in Pennsylvania, where Temple and Pitt became "state related" universities, which were pretty much a public/private partnership. W&M, a college with a number of reorganizations went from private to public and the start of the last century.
what we haven't seen or what I know no example of is universities that went from public to private status.
Yet we are living in an era where states are putting far less into the funding of their universities and some of those universities, mainly the state's flagship, are now operating under almost complete autonomy from the state and often have the type of endowments that indicate they could stand on their own.
Do you think we will see in the foreseeable future any conversions of public flagship universities into private ones (which may or may not retain a working relationship with their states through state funding assistance to in-state residents).
If you think we may see something like this happen, which flagship universities would you expect to see make such a switch?
I can't really see this happening anywhere because of the amount the school would have to repay the state for its assets -- compensation for the classroom and administrative buildings, scientific equipment in the labs, stadiums and athletic facilities, and dorms (though at some schools they're already privately owned ). The newly independent school would have to have a s**t load of cash or be able to borrow it for all that. The newly privatized school would also be on the hook for all the pension and post-retirement liabilities of thousands of employees instead of that being the state's responsibility. If the flagship had that much cash it wouldn't need to go private in the first place.
Plus, I don't think there's a governor alive--even with DeVos trying hard to drive the "public" out of public education -- who wouldn't be voted out of office yesterday for selling off the incubator of much of a state's future intellectual and/or economic growth, and perhaps even a state's only claim to national fame, like its big-time sports teams. I can see closing or merging a smaller campus in the system, and maybe that's already happened somewhere. But states have a big interest in keeping their name slapped on a big university, even if said university is getting decreasing state support.
I can't really see this happening anywhere because of the amount the school would have to repay the state for its assets -- compensation for the classroom and administrative buildings, scientific equipment in the labs, stadiums and athletic facilities, and dorms (though at some schools they're already privately owned ). The newly independent school would have to have a s**t load of cash or be able to borrow it for all that. The newly privatized school would also be on the hook for all the pension and post-retirement liabilities of thousands of employees instead of that being the state's responsibility. If the flagship had that much cash it wouldn't need to go private in the first place.
Plus, I don't think there's a governor alive--even with DeVos trying hard to drive the "public" out of public education -- who wouldn't be voted out of office yesterday for selling off the incubator of much of a state's future intellectual and/or economic growth, and perhaps even a state's only claim to national fame, like its big-time sports teams. I can see closing or merging a smaller campus in the system, and maybe that's already happened somewhere. But states have a big interest in keeping their name slapped on a big university, even if said university is getting decreasing state support.
To be blunt the only thing that will get the PUBLIC upset is loss of the big-time sports. The public could care less about intellectual aspects and the public isn't convinced education has much to do with economic growth.
Most likely is that some state universities will be left to die slowly of budget cuts and neglect. Any valuable faculty will be poached by others. The buildings in themselves are worth little. Equipment has a very finite life.
Sorry about the cynicism, must be the Trump era gettin' to me.
Goverment rarely starts spending less on something.
That is an editorial (opinion piece), not an article or research, and the editorial states things without footnotes, and cherry picks information to support their opinion piece.
The Center For Budget Priorities piece is actual research.
Ok, I think people's views on this is going to be rooted in their politics.
Not really. Is funding "down"? No. Has state spending on education kept up with the rate of increase in college, or even schools at every level? No.
Many times an increase of 8% in state funding instead of the requested 13% is represented as a "cut" by school administrators from colleges down to local school districts.
I don't know what drives the increase in college costs but for local school systems it's unfunded mandates like testing and, to an extent, the explosion of Special Ed services. Some of that is legislative and some of that has been the redefining of disabling conditions, the most recent has been the redefinition of Asberger's/Autism.
State university funding is down by as much as 80% compared to its proportional and per capita highs which were the early 1970s. It is up if we look at it in an absolute sense because the U.S. population is up and the proportion of the population in college is higher than it was in the 1970s too.
I doubt any states would convert their public universities to private ones... I can't see any benefit of doing so.
I do think we'll see reductions, mergers, consolidations, and reorganizations of public college and university systems. Connecticut has already started a consolidation process and I believe Wisconsin is going to initiate one. Pennsylvania is also probably in dire need of doing so; I've heard about some college mergers there. The main reason is plain demographics. The college building boom occurred when the U.S. population was more heavily concentrated in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states.
They actually need more campuses in the sun belt, where enrollment is bursting at the seams. They no longer need as many campuses as currently exist in the upper midwest like Wisconsin.
I believe that, eventually, we will see the first two years of college and/or post-secondary vocational ed become publicly funded and possibly mandatory; basically there will be grades 13-14. Existing 4-year public universities will become more specialized and stop offering as much general education, probably merging a number of master's programs with undergraduate ones. Those lower colleges will feed a pipeline to them. We already have the infrastructure available in our community colleges and already they spend too much of their resources on remediation.
The same process occurred when the 1-room schoolhouse evolved into elementary, middle, and high schools. It used to be that high school was a kind of "special" thing for the smarter students, not dissimilar from college today.
It'll be hell before any kind of reform happens, though, because people will scream socialism and whatever like crazy.
Last edited by redguard57; 11-01-2017 at 06:08 PM..
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