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To contact members of the regional task force, email RegionalsTaskForce@MiamiOH.edu
To contact Miami University President David Hodge, email President@MiamiOH.edu
Miami University’s regional campus students are worried the value of their degree will diminish once branches located in Hamilton, Middletown and West Chester Twp. are further distinguished from the main campus in Oxford.
University President David Hodge announced earlier this year that he wants to draft a new plan for the future of the regional campuses by May.
Campus leaders are considering a series of changes, including hiring separate faculty for the branch colleges, re-naming as well as re-branding the regionals, and handing out different diplomas to the satellite school students.
Fear and questions about those changes drew more than 100 students and faculty to forums, hosted by a university task force that’s been charged with examining the future of the regional campuses, held Tuesday and Wednesday.
Adam Davisson, a 20-year-old zoology major who takes classes on both the Oxford and Hamilton campuses, said he’s particularly worried about a proposal that would distinguish degrees earned at the regional campuses from those earned at Oxford.
“The reason we come to Miami Hamilton or Miami Middletown is because we do get the same degree,” Davisson said during a forum held Tuesday. “I know that’s what attracted me in the first place. I don’t see how giving us something that we came for, how would that increase enrollment?”
Driving the change, task force members said, are university officials’ desire to increase enrollment and revenue at the regional campuses as well as the number of bachelor degree offerings there. Competition from neighboring community colleges, such as Sinclair Community College, have made the two-year, associate’s degree market less desirable for Miami, said Moira Casey, a Middletown professor and co-chair of the task force.
“The current trajectory of the regional campuses is not financially sustainable,” Casey said. “The financial situation we’re facing and as well as what the students in the region need is the motivation for these (changes).”
But offering more bachelor’s degrees means the regional campuses will need to distinguish the degrees and classes that are offered on the regional campus from those at the Oxford campus to avoid any competition with one another, she added.
At issue is also that students attending the Hamilton, Middletown and West Chester Twp. campuses pay the regional campus rate if they take classes at Oxford. That practice will likely soon come to an end.
“I think the financial piece of being able to take Oxford classes at a lower rate is probably going to change,” Beverley Taylor, a regional campus physics professor, said. “Think about it from the point of view of a student in Oxford; when they realize that the student sitting next to them is paying half of what they’re paying.”
Task force members said they’re looking at how several other universities across the nation run their regional campuses, including Penn State and Ohio State University systems.
Several students and faculty questioned university leaders’ motives behind distancing the regional campuses from the Oxford campus.
“If the problem is lack of enrollment on the regional campuses, why not look at models that put more emphasis on the regional campuses?” Alicia Wellinghoff, a 28-year-old senior at the Middletown campus, said. “Talented students come to these regional campuses. So, instead of putting more emphasis into retaining them, you just want to cut them off? That’s how I feel.”
While several changes are coming to the university, Casey said university administration are not considering cutting off the regional campuses from Miami University entirely.
“We’re always going to be Miami University,” Casey said. “Rumors fly that we’re going to be sold to a community college. That’s not part of this. We’re going to be Miami University.”
Nearly a dozen community members, parents and students have also written their concerns to the task force since the potential changes were announced.
In a letter obtained by this newspaper through an open records request, Jim Blount, a historian and Hamilton resident, suggested last week that Miami University consider separating itself entirely from the regional campuses.
“There have been a successive line of these committees, task forces and consultants — some operating in virtual secrecy — in the last 25 to 30 years that have studied the scorned regional campuses and their relationship to the elitist Oxford institution that appears consumed by bringing in a superior “brand” of students,” Blount wrote. “During this long, agonizing process there has been a refusal to recognize the success of the thousands of people who began their higher education at Hamilton or Middletown.”
Task force members told students and faculty during Tuesday and Wednesday’s forums that the final decision as to how the regional campuses will operate in the future rests with the university president and trustees. Casey suggested students voice their concerns to the president directly via his email.
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