Dive Brief:

• Kansas legislators are considering a bill that would allow the Wichita Area Technical College to become the School of Technology and Applied Science at Wichita State University.
• The Wichita Eagle reports that the two schools have been discussing a merger or consolidation for months, and the Senate bill would chart a path for the technical college faculty to become WSU employees and students to graduate with WSU degrees.
• The proposal builds upon the Shocker Pathway, which lets students begin their associate degrees at WATC and finish at WSU, but the move could still be a few years off as anything approved by the legislature would go before the Kansas Board of Regents and need to be signed off by the university’s accreditor.

Dive Insight:

The Wichita Area Technical College has a more open admissions policy than Wichita State University, and its courses are cheaper per-credit. Officials seem to want to maintain the affordability and access of the technical college once it gets folded into the larger university. And while restructuring is expected, the technical college may be able to retain its entire faculty and staff through the transition.

Mergers and consolidations are becoming more common as colleges and universities adapt to a more competitive higher education environment that, in some parts of the country, has fewer graduating high schoolers to recruit, thanks to changing demographics. The key to moving forward with such plans is to begin exploring options before institutional finances are in such bad shape to be unattractive to potential partners.