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Indiana University of Pennsylvania President  Michael Driscoll talks to the media about the recent events at the university that have drawn national attention Monday, March 19, 2018.
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IUP's president Michael Driscoll says his state university faces a new reality

Peter Diana/Post-Gazette

IUP's president Michael Driscoll says his state university faces a new reality

Once the largest of the state-owned schools, IUP must adapt to smaller scale and different students

Indiana University of Pennsylvania's future is as an 8,000- to 9,000-student campus with a vastly changed reality from roughly a decade ago when enrollment of 15,000 made it the Commonwealth's largest state-owned school, its president says.

Michael Driscoll articulated that in a speech dubbed "The Future of IUP." His remarks this week, now posted to the school's website, mixed Biblical text with blunt observation.

Mr. Driscoll said "the hell of the last two years — and all the scars it has left" has produced feelings of isolation, grief and even hate over the pandemic and campus job loss.

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He said the state-owned university will not renew existing committees working on endeavors including student success and effectively begin anew to focus on serving a student population that will be decidedly different going forward in their age, ethnicity and needs.

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IUP will offer a residential experience, he said, but fewer students will choose that option and will come to campus at different ages, for different lengths of time and with needs different from the traditional-age college student upon which IUP was built.

"I ask for your indulgence as I rely on Judeo-Christian traditions to come to grips with it all," Mr. Driscoll told his audience in IUP’s Performing Arts Center. "I find that all faith traditions provide wisdom, solace, and understanding. In this challenging time, I’ve turned to what I know best."

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In the seventh century, the Jewish Kingdom of Judah "was a strong nation. Its center was the city of Jerusalem, and the center of that city was Solomon’s Temple," IUP’s president said. "While Judah had been a vassal state of the Assyrians and was currently a vassal state of the Babylonians, it was rightly proud of its status among nations.” 

They might even have considered themselves a flagship, Mr. Driscoll said, borrowing a modern-day term often used in academia to describe leading campuses.

But when they refused to pay additional tribute, they were vanquished by the Babylonians, said Mr. Driscoll. Jerusalem was leveled and many were forcibly moved to Babylonia.

Mr. Driscoll drew a parallel from that forced exodus to IUP.

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"We are in a foreign land, and we have arrived here through much pain and suffering," he said. "It is not a comfortable place to be. We no longer have a firm foundation on which to stand. How can we sing? How can we go on?”

He said that just like the Judeans, "We can not go home. We can not return to what once was."

The campus changes and redesign now underway across the 14 State System of Higher Education campuses that fueled Mr. Driscoll’s stark comments are part of a broader reordering of priorities on university systems in states including Pennsylvania that face declining high school graduate numbers, a fast-changing higher education market and tepid state funding.

In Pennsylvania, much focus of late has been on the six western and northeastern campuses being merged into two — California, Clarion and Edinboro in the west and Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield in the northeast. But events that brought Mr. Driscoll to the podium point to a broader reckoning across the State System, charged with providing students with an affordable university education.

Last week, another State System campus, Edinboro University, confirmed that it plans to sell two residence halls, completed little more than a decade earlier when the system’s statewide enrollment had reached a peak of nearly 120,000 students. Its enrollment now stands just shy of 89,000. Edinboro’s enrollment is about half what it once was.

IUP spokeswoman Michelle Fryling said Thursday that many double rooms have been converted to single rooms, and the residence halls including those built less than two decades ago have a 30% vacancy rate. She said she is unaware of plans to sell off any dorms, but referred questions to the Foundation for IUP, which she said owns the newer halls.

“At this time, there has been no discussion of selling some of the rooms/buildings, given the new normal enrollment,” said Betsy Lauber, the foundation’s executive director.

As of this year, IUP’s enrollment stands at 9,308. West Chester University, now the largest State System campus in a fast-growing part of suburban Philadelphia, enrolls 17.640. 

Mr. Driscoll, IUP’s president since 2012, said “thousands of new students will not suddenly appear and fill beds and classrooms and coffers. While the demographic projections are not precise, they are compelling.

“The number of “traditional” students will continue to decline, and, of that declining number, we are likely to see fewer plan to enter college immediately after high school, if at all,” he added.

’Our students come to us with a broad range of ages, goals, backgrounds, ethnicities, races, and religions. They have experienced oppression and discrimination on levels that were foreign to many of us at that age,” he said.

“They will care less about getting a bachelor’s or master’s degree and more about getting the skills and interests they think they need today.’

Jamie Martin, president of the Association of Pennsylvania of State College and University Faculties, said she feels the IUP situation not only has a faculty union leader but as someone who grew up in Freeport, went to the university and has taught there in the years since. 

“For me, personally, this has been painful to watch,” she said. “I remember how vibrant the campus was.”

Bill Schackner: bschackner@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1977 and on Twitter: @Bschackner

First Published: April 22, 2022, 4:37 p.m.

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