Dive Temporary:
- A graduate well being science establishment in Pennsylvania is seeking to merge with Drexel College, one of many largest non-public nonprofit establishments within the area.
- Salus College, additionally a non-public nonprofit faculty, is searching for an “affiliation” with Drexel, the 2 establishments introduced Monday. A partnership with Salus would open an array of famend “non-overlapping graduate diploma packages within the well being sciences,” Drexel’s president, John Fry, mentioned in a press release.
- A spokesperson for Salus didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Tuesday. Nevertheless, Salus’ president, Michael Mittelman, informed the campus a deal linking the universities’ graduate well being sciences schooling and medical follow packages might wrap up as quickly as late spring or early summer time 2023, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Dive Perception:
Enrollment has held regular at Drexel, a big, well-known establishment with a major campus in Philadelphia, for the final decade, with 23,216 college students in fall 2021, together with 14,413 undergraduates.
Nevertheless, faculties throughout the U.S. have eyed increasing their graduate choices because the pool of potential undergraduate college students continues to shrink. Rising healthcare packages has been a preferred transfer, particularly amongst small and midsize faculties, as states grapple with shortages in fields like nursing.
In his assertion, Fry identified that “demographic shifts, international occasions and an unsure financial system” have affected larger schooling. Faculties should be extra nimble in bolstering their tutorial strengths, he mentioned.
Pairing with Salus would “would additional solidify Drexel’s place as a frontrunner in making ready future interprofessional well being sciences practitioners” in areas comparable to optometry, audiology, blindness and low-vision research, speech-language pathology, occupational remedy, and orthotics and prosthetics, Fry mentioned.
The Drexel president highlighted that Salus operates 4 medical amenities in Philadelphia and Montgomery counties specializing in a few of these packages.
An affiliation with Salus, which enrolled fewer than 1,200 graduate college students in fall 2021, could be topic to varied regulatory approvals, Fry mentioned. The governing boards of the respective establishments would log out on the deal in Might, he mentioned.
The upper schooling market in Pennsylvania is especially saturated. The Keystone State incorporates a host of public establishments, a few of them outstanding names like Pennsylvania State College and the College of Pittsburgh. Prestigious non-public establishments additionally abound, together with College of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon College.
This hypercompetitive setting partly led the Pennsylvania State System of Greater Training to merge six of its establishments into two final 12 months, with the hopes of bolstering enrollment and drawing in untapped scholar populations, together with working adults.
As of October, nonetheless, the system’s enrollment continued to fall. The variety of college students dropped from 88,700 college students in fall 2021 to about 84,600 final 12 months. System officers expressed optimism, although, because the share of first-time college students picked up for the primary time in a decade.
