Dive Brief:

• A graduate health science institution in Pennsylvania is looking to merge with Drexel University, one of the largest private nonprofit institutions in the region. 
• Salus University, also a private nonprofit college, is seeking an “affiliation” with Drexel, the two institutions announced Monday. A partnership with Salus would open an array of renowned “non-overlapping graduate degree programs in the health sciences,” Drexel's president, John Fry, said in a statement.
• A spokesperson for Salus did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. However, Salus’ president, Michael Mittelman, told the campus a deal linking the colleges’ graduate health sciences education and clinical practice programs could wrap up as soon as late spring or early summer 2023, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. 

Dive Insight:

Enrollment has held steady at Drexel, a large, well-known institution with a primary campus in Philadelphia, for the last decade, with 23,216 students in fall 2021, including 14,413 undergraduates. 

However, colleges across the U.S. have eyed expanding their graduate offerings as the pool of potential undergraduate students continues to shrink. Growing healthcare programs has been a popular move, especially among small and midsize colleges, as states grapple with shortages in fields like nursing. 

In his statement, Fry pointed out that “demographic shifts, global events and an uncertain economy” have affected higher education. Colleges must be more nimble in bolstering their academic strengths, he said.

Pairing with Salus would “would further solidify Drexel’s place as a leader in preparing future interprofessional health sciences practitioners” in areas such as optometry, audiology, blindness and low-vision studies, speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, and orthotics and prosthetics, Fry said.

The Drexel president highlighted that Salus operates four clinical facilities in Philadelphia and Montgomery counties that specialize in some of those programs.

An affiliation with Salus, which enrolled fewer than 1,200 graduate students in fall 2021, would be subject to various regulatory approvals, Fry said. The governing boards of the respective institutions would sign off on the deal in May, he said. 

The higher education market in Pennsylvania is particularly saturated. The Keystone State features a host of public institutions, some of them prominent names like Pennsylvania State University and the University of Pittsburgh. Prestigious private institutions also abound, including University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University.

This hypercompetitive environment in part led the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education to merge six of its institutions into two last year, with the hopes of bolstering enrollment and drawing in untapped student populations, including working adults. 

As of October, however, the system’s enrollment continued to fall. The number of students dropped from 88,700 students in fall 2021 to about 84,600 last year. System officials expressed optimism, though, as the share of first-time students picked up for the first time in a decade.