Dive Temporary:
- The College of Redlands, a nonprofit establishment in Southern California, plans to accumulate Presidio Graduate College, a nonprofit working within the San Francisco space, after the graduate faculty decided its monetary outlook required it to discover a companion or shut.
- The settlement will give Presidio, which has operated hybrid programming together with weekend residencies across the Bay Space, a everlasting house at a Marin County campus about 15 miles northwest of San Francisco. College of Redlands took on that campus in 2019, when it acquired San Francisco Theological Seminary.
- Including Presidio will offset declines within the variety of MBA college students at College of Redlands for the reason that onset of the pandemic. College of Redlands at the moment has about 300 MBA college students.
Dive Perception:
The acquisition nonetheless wants accreditor approval, however it’s anticipated to shut on the finish of June. If it does, it will characterize a homecoming of kinds for Presidio. The graduate faculty’s predecessor, World School West, was based in 1973 in the identical Marin County location that it’s to inhabit after the College of Redlands deal closes.
Presidio has been by way of many iterations since then — providing nondegree programs geared towards midlife adults starting in 1993, creating a bachelor’s completion program with Vermont’s Goddard School in 1999, and providing an MBA underneath an affiliation with Alliant Worldwide College in 2003.
It took its present title in 2009 and gained impartial accreditation from the Western Affiliation of Colleges and Schools Senior School and College Fee in 2014. From 2018 to 2021, it had a partnership with Amity College, a nonprofit training group primarily based in Asia. That settlement gave Amity a number of seats on Presidio’s governing board, and it additionally included funding for Presidio.
Presidio touts a spotlight on management and graduates who need to create “a greater world and more healthy planet.” However the establishment may be very small — it has 130 college students, 12 full-time workers and some dozen part-time workers, together with adjunct school that usually quantity 20 or 25 per semester.
It has swung between losses and web earnings lately. In fiscal 2020, it misplaced about $240,000, then posted $1.1 million in web earnings in 2021. Fiscal 2022 will present a “small working loss,” in line with an e-mail from a spokesperson. Monetary statements for that 12 months aren’t but out there.
Early this 12 months, Presidio began evaluating its viability. The establishment’s leaders determined it wanted a merger companion and took proposals from totally different establishments, finally selecting College of Redlands.
“This merger is the correct long-term answer for Presidio, offering steady monetary backing for our packages whereas enhancing our scholar expertise,” Presidio’s board chair, Suzanne Farver, mentioned in a press release. “The board fastidiously evaluated our alternatives, and we had been unanimous in our alternative of the College of Redlands.”
Presidio’s board will stop to exist as soon as the acquisition closes. However as much as two present Presidio board members will obtain invites to grow to be trustees for College of Redlands, and several other directors are anticipated to hitch the buying establishment.
Some downsizing is probably going.
College of Redlands plans to evaluation staffing wants within the subsequent few months. Its leaders do not but know precisely how staffing will change.
“There will likely be persevering with alternatives for present Presidio school to proceed educating their programs for the College of Redlands,” College of Redlands President Krista Newkirk mentioned in a press release.
College of Redlands is way bigger than Presidio. College of Redlands has about 450 employees, over 200 full-time school members and greater than 300 adjunct and part-time school. It enrolls greater than 3,500 college students, counting graduate college students and undergraduates.
Presidio places of work at the moment function just about, and it does not personal a bodily campus. The acquisition will create the Presidio Middle for Sustainable Options inside the College of Redlands’ enterprise faculty.
That enterprise faculty modified its title lately to the College of Enterprise & Society, which leaders mentioned was an try and sign its dedication to environmental sustainability.
“This partnership matches hand-in-glove with our objectives for the college and for our Marin Campus,” Thomas Horan, dean of the enterprise faculty, mentioned in a press release. “Presidio’s mission and its wonderful sustainability and social justice curriculum is a extremely valued complement to our personal mission to empower our college students to impression enterprise and society positively, and environmental sustainability is a key side of this broader mission.”
