Collaboration is key to private university survival

Facing big challenges and rapid changes in the higher education landscape, small private colleges face a big choice. Stand pat and risk extinction or innovate to navigate a changing world.

That’s why it was heartening to see news reported this week by The Gazette’s Vanessa Miller that Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids and St. Ambrose University in Davenport are exploring cooperation and collaboration to better serve student needs.

In the short term, Mount Mercy and St. Ambrose will likely allow students to take an array online and in-person courses from either university beginning this fall. Traditional and non-traditional students would benefit from flexibility and expanded course offerings.

In the long term, the schools are exploring the possibility of a “strategic combination.”

“We're announcing our exploration of that strategic combination, which — if it moves forward — would mean that we'd eventually join together to become one institution,” Mount Mercy President Todd Olson told Miller. “We're not announcing that that's a definite outcome today. But we are announcing that’s something that we're seriously exploring.”

Under such a collaboration agreement, there would still be two campuses, separate athletics programs, separate endowments and separate names. But some redundancies could be eliminated, streamlining administrative duties while opening new possibilities for students.

“It was really a conversation of possibilities and what-ifs,” said St. Ambrose President Amy Novak. “What if we could think a little bit differently about how two universities, who have similar values and missions, could come together and really expand opportunity for students?”

Both universities have seen declining enrollment. Mount Mercy’s enrollment has declined 22% since 2017 and St. Ambrose’s enrollment declined 13% during the same period.

Innovation took on a sense of urgency for small private colleges after Iowa Wesleyan University in Mount Pleasant closed last year. Wesleyan also pursued collaboration but failed in its request funding from the state using COVID relief funds.

St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy deserve considerable credit for joining forces to meet the headwinds facing higher education. We’re optimistic the schools can succeed.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com