Dive Transient:
- Bay Path College introduced Tuesday its plans to amass Cambridge School, bringing collectively two non-public Massachusetts nonprofits centered on profession schooling.
- The universities anticipate the deal to shut this June pending accreditor and regulatory approval. Cambridge intends to maintain its program prices the identical and to proceed to award levels till the 2 establishments are totally built-in, which may take as much as two years, officers stated.
- After the acquisition, Bay Path expects to enroll greater than 5,000 college students. The 2 establishments are equally sized, with practically 2,500 college students attending Bay Path in fall 2022 in contrast with about 2,100 college students at Cambridge.
Dive Perception:
The 2 establishments entered discussions a couple of potential partnership final summer season. They based mostly their choice to return collectively on their shared mission, in line with a joint assertion.
Bay Path, a 127-year-old establishment based mostly in western Massachusetts, has women-only undergraduate packages and coeducational graduate choices. Federal knowledge for fall 2021 exhibits nearly all of its undergraduates had been nontraditional college students, sometimes outlined as these ages 25 and older.
Likewise, 80% of undergraduates at Boston-based Cambridge had been nontraditional college students that 12 months. And a major majority, 87%, studied half time in fall 2022. It has 5 areas: one in California, one other in Puerto Rico and three in Massachusetts.
Each faculties have giant proportions of graduate college students. They had been virtually 47% of the coed inhabitants at Bay Path in fall 2022 and practically 61% of headcounts at Cambridge.
Cambridge’s governing board believed discovering “a bigger platform and a like-minded associate” was one of the best path to advance its mission, the establishment’s interim president, Stephen Healey, stated in a press release.
“Bay Path College is uniquely suited to combine Cambridge School’s packages and serve our non-traditional pupil physique,” Healey stated.
The 2 establishments share an accreditor, the New England Fee of Larger Schooling. They may want its signoff, together with approval from state regulators.
Massachusetts Commissioner of Larger Schooling Noe Ortega signaled help for the acquisition Tuesday, saying the 2 establishments search to mix in a approach that makes college students the precedence.
“The leaders of each establishments have proven a dedication to a clean transition for present Cambridge School college students that provides us confidence that diploma completion for these college students will proceed to be prioritized,” Ortega stated in a press release.
Cambridge has lots of the hallmarks of schools that both shut or consolidate with different establishments.
Its enrollment has sunk from 3,378 college students in fall 2012 to 2,135 college students a decade later, a 36.8% decline. It has additionally run deficits from fiscal years 2018 to 2022, its newest tax information present.
Bay Path’s fall 2022 enrollment of two,465 college students is barely greater than the variety of college students it had a decade in the past.
Nevertheless, that enrollment is down 28.4% from fall 2018, when it hit a current excessive of three,444 college students. Throughout that interval, it posted income surpluses, tax paperwork present.
