This article was originally published by Pacific Union College on March 6, 2023
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/12256
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://spectrummagazine.org/node/12256
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I think it would be good for all the Adventist colleges in North America to collaborate on what degree programs they offer. With the ability to travel anywhere these days, the need for regional colleges to serve only regional needs isn’t as necessary as it once was. There is still overlap and redundancies between the colleges; they are competing for the same student dollars. A little more cooperation and a little less competition could help all of their budgets. That said, I love my college on the mountain and wish them all the best.
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I agree. It makes me sense to have one institution with multiple campuses, each with a speciality. Common classes could be available on all campuses. It would also be possible to have some classes done remotely. There are universities in AUS that are operating in this way.
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When Andrews University offered a degree in Dayton, Ohio (if memory serves a PT or PA degree?), it rented space in one multi-floor building to offer the program. No dorms, no cafeteria, no extended campus requiring staff, etc. It was the most profitable program they offered at the time, by a margin. Residential campuses are unbelievably costly and without student subsidies (denominational employees) or family resources beyond lower or even middle middle class, debt and stress are inevitable. I fear the PUC restructuring is a band-aid on a profound wound, but I wish them every success.
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Hmmm. When I graduated from PUC in 1989, the enrollment was 1,678. It went down from there and then back up and in 2013 - in a fluke - it was again exactly 1,678. Six years later in 2019, enrollment was down 45%(!!) to 929 and in 2020 was 966. In 2022 is was just 829, a further 11% loss in three years.
PUC is little less than 1/2 the size it was 10 years ago. Wow!
My kid’s local Christian High School is bigger than PUC, with almost 1000 students.
While enrollment not the only a measure of success, one wonders how PUC has floundered so much in the last decade. Was it perhaps the Heather Knight effect? It does seem that the Alumni were upset by her leadership. Maybe they stopped sending their adult children?
Or maybe they stopped sending their adult children because they didn’t want them to be treated like children the way we were in the 1980’s, which I expect is still happening.
Per the 2022 commencement program, the graduating class last year was 216, of which 117 or 54% were nursing students. That’s fine, of course, but it means there were only 99 other graduates for all the other degrees.
One potential upside due to the large nursing program, if you’re a guy into having a girlfriend or two, is that the school is 37% male and 63% female. I expect there are lots of lonely women on the Holy Hill!
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The denomination is negligent in failing to facilitate larger, over-arching planning with strategies that would ultimately enable the university-level education system to survive. As I have been led to believe, the NAD universities are still significantly tethered to the church financially, in order to maintain theological control of the milieu. That’s ‘leverage’ and instead of focusing exclusively on resistance to science, it could be employed in productive ways to solve for what is surely a down-hill path for at least some of the institutions in the years to come. No one is addressing the issue of relevance.
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Uh…so now it’s okay to do the misogynist thing and assume most of the nursing students are women?!?!
That said, I suspect the numbers will confirm your stereotypical thinking, so a second, but perhaps more fundamental question, is whether or not such mental processes are inherently wrong or necessarily bad?
Well, there’s no need for me to assume, as I’ve been there recently for my step-sister’s graduation. And also the commencement booklet with the names of the graduates makes it clear as well.
That’s rather a bitchy thing so write, and also you can’t know what you assert to be true, as you like to point out here on a regular basis when others make assumptions about your thinking.
My bad.
I was trying to be sarcastic and failed miserably.
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