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Campus Consolidations

Gainesville State College and North Georgia College & State University

Print friendly Modified January 23, 2012

Profiles

Gainesville State College

  • Established 1964
  • Fall 2011 Enrollment: 8,569
  • 69.1% enrollment from Hall, Gwinnett, and Forsyth
  • First-Year Retention: 61.4%
  • Three-Year Graduation: 11.7%
  • FY11 Degrees Conferred: 882
  • Total FY12 Budget: $56.5M

North Georgia College & State University

  • Established 1873
  • Fall 2011 Enrollment: 6,067
  • 35.9% enrollment from Forsyth, Hall, and Gwinnett
  • First-Year Retention: 79.9%
  • Six-Year Graduation: 49.2%
  • FY11 Degrees Conferred: 1,203
  • Total FY12 Budget: $65M

Opportunities & Challenges

Opportunities

  • Creates an institution of nearly 15,000 students that provides a strategic approach to meeting the higher education needs of students in the northeast Georgia region.
  • Provides a broad spectrum of academic programs from associate to graduate degrees in a student-friendly, seamless system. Students from both institutions already share a similar geographic origin and transfer between both institutions.
  • Increases access to educational attainment and enrollment opportunities in significant growth and population area of the state.
  • Efficiently expands baccalaureate and graduate offerings in Gainesville while allowing for increased enrollment, e.g., teacher education, foreign languages.
  • Capacity for on-campus growth is limited at North Georgia. The consolidation provides additional capacity in Gainesville.
  • Builds on a strong foundation of collaboration and partnership that already exists as reflected in North Georgia’s and Gainesville’s program offerings in Cumming and Gainesville.
  • Increases opportunities to hire for specialized needs. Through economies of scale, there is the capacity for needed higher education enterprise professionals with appropriate expertise and experience levels.
  • Combines resources to enhance responsiveness to regional economic and community development needs.

Challenges

  • The institutions currently serve student populations with differing levels of college readiness. Balancing access and college completion will be a challenge to address during implementation.
  • Watkinsville campus will be maintained; however, implementation will need to consider how to best optimize the role of that campus.