Why do we over-build?

The three-day strike at the 14 schools in Pennsylvania's state-university system is over.  But the financial troubles at these 14 former teachers' colleges are far from over.

In 2010 the system suffered a $90 million cut in state support, only a third of which has been clawed back since Democrat Tom Wolfe took over the governor's mansion.  Meanwhile, for a system that is 85 % dependent on in-state traditional-age students, declining high-school graduation numbers in the Commonwealth are aggravating the fiscal issue.

But what seems utterly incomprehensible to me is how Penn State University was allowed over the past decade and a half to expand many of its 19 branch campuses into 4-year operations, many of which are in direct competition with the 14 so called PASSHE schools.  Penn State's urge for hegemony in the Keystone State has also put pressure on the many private colleges scattered across the Commonwealth.  To me this suggests a vacuum of leadership and a dearth of planning in Harrisburg, the state capital.

For some of the 14 sister institutions, it may be too late to step back from the brink, Chester (PA)'s Cheyney University, founded way back in 1837, is on life support.  Here's what a 2014 audit found:

Cheyney, a historically black school that is the smallest of the system’s 14 universities, is located in Delaware County. Supporters of the school in October announced they had resurrected a decades-old civil rights lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia claiming Cheyney does not receive equitable resources.
Mr. DePasquale found that total operating expenses at Cheyney the last three years of the audit period outstripped revenues, leaving Cheyney with a negative net position equal to $12.3 million on operating expenses of $46.6 million. Its budget for 2014-15 projects a shortfall of $5.5 million, the auditor general found.
Cheyney’s current liabilities as of June 30, 2013, totaled $8,992,867, compared with current revenues of $6,001,508, meaning the school had a dollar in current liabilities for every 67 cents in assets.

Cheyney’s full- and part-time enrollment as reported by the State System this fall stood at 1,022, down 16 percent from last year and 36 percent from 2010. The audit as well found significant student declines when using a different enrollment benchmark -- the total equivalent of full-time students, which is projected this year to be down by 28 percent from the 2008-09 academic year.

Absent significant cash infusions from the state, it's hard to see Cheyney surviving.

Look here... I'm not opposed to weak, poor-quality colleges being winnowed from the herd.  What I am questioning here is the trend, at least in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, toward massive funding and concomitant expansion, of selected schools to the detriment of other well-established, historically successful institutions in the same geographic regions.  Witness across the Delaware in the garden State the extraordinary growth of Rowan University.

Rowan nears enrollment target years ahead of schedule

Author: Jonathan Lai Staff Writer    Date: February 13, 2016  Publication: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)   Page: B01

Just two years into an ambitious 10-year growth plan that included increasing full-time undergraduate enrollment by nearly 30 percent, Rowan University has nearly met that goal, though it has fallen slightly behind in others.

Rowan's president, Ali A. Houshmand, set the goal of having 12,000 full-time undergraduate students in the 2023-24 school year. That number was to be reached through controlled growth from 9,348 students in fall 2013.

Where are those students coming from?  Just ask the competition.

As the holder of a Ph.D. in American Studies, I might take an historical view of what I'll call the Penn State-Rowan U. phenomenon.  The way of the American pioneer was slash and burn, wear out the soil, and move on.  In the 1950s and 1960s we abandoned our cities for the suburbs, leaving behind hollow downtowns and ghettos.  A nation that has always been blessed with more resources than it really needed, America has frequently been profligate in its use and discarding of those resources.  This tendency seems to have found its way into our higher education system at a time when the paradigm of higher education is shifting... which is challenge enough for many us without this seemingly unnecessary competition.