Does the arrival of Stark State College in town pose a threat to its new neighbor, the University of Akron? Professors and others at the university have expressed understandable concern that the answer is yes.
The worry is that the community college will deepen the university’s enrollment problems. Projections currently show an overall decline of 9 percent at UA for the coming academic year. The university must arrest the decline, and do so quickly, before a damaging trend takes hold.
Even better would be turning around the enrollment number. Part of the challenge in both tasks involves making progress while the university navigates a leadership transition, first, finding an interim president and then, a successor to Scott Scarborough.
No question, the university must adjust to the presence of Stark State. At the same time, this doesn’t have to be a threatening situation. The opening is there to develop a cooperative, complementary relationship between the two institutions, each with a particular mission to meet the needs of students, families and businesses in the Akron area.
Officials at Stark State see the potential of an untapped market in Summit County. Rather than a zero-sum game, they have plans for a new branch attracting 5,000 students who would not otherwise consider any pathway to a post-secondary degree.
Such a view hardly is a stretch, considering that Ohio ranks 32nd among the states in the share of its population — about 25 percent — with a college degree. The state has a long way to go in meeting demands from higher-tech and other industries for skilled workers.
The federal Education Department reports that 38.8 percent of Ohioans have some kind of college attainment. That leaves room for improvement considering that Massachusetts leads the nation at 54 percent and Ohio runs in the middle of the pack.
Much of Stark State’s appeal lies in its well-known ability to deliver low-cost, two-year associate’s degrees that prepare students to take a technical skill directly into the workforce. Almost three-fourths (73 percent) of current students are on that track. There, the conflict with UA is minimal, its two-year College of Applied Sciences & Technology (formerly Summit College) offering only one competing degree with Stark State, in construction technology.
More, Stark State already is the largest source of transfer students to the University of Akron. Through its partnership with UA, Stark State is positioned to deliver more transfer students seeking four-year degrees. While some students thinking about entering UA as freshmen might choose Stark State instead, the experience in other cities clearly indicates a positive relationship overall.
Akron is the largest metropolitan area in Ohio without a traditional community college, and there is little reason to conclude the University of Akron and Stark State College cannot work together like research universities and community colleges do across the state and the country.
Viewed from the broader perspective of the regional economy, the addition of a Stark State campus in Akron promises to add to the ability of the region to generate new economic activity by providing companies with workers with the right skills for today’s jobs.