I thought of this discussion when I saw this today.

(Disclaimer: Did not listen to actual interview, only read article.)

Almost Half Of Universities May Be Gone In 5 To 10 Years, Professor Admits

Extension is not always a matter of “wanting” or “not wanting” to go somewhere. How many times have we talked about the SEC schools that need more groups but there aren’t groups that have the $ or local alumnae available to handle it?

Good heavens! She said "choosing" not "wanting." Groups may want to go to a campus but choose not to for any number of reasons. And it isn't always money or local alumnae. Not everyone wants to be at Big Southern U!

I know that.

I just see this making the tier system that’s already in the NPC worse. Obviously all the groups will never be equal - we are 150 years too late for that.

It just seems to me that if there are, as some people are saying, CCs that are virtually indistinguishable from regular 4 year colleges, it would be better to vote on expanding to them individually as exceptions to the rule, rather than opening the door to CCs that because of their student turnover are simply not suitable places to put an NPC group.

I trust NPC member groups to evaluate for themselves whether or not a community college would be a good place to plant a colony, just as they do now for 4 year schools
Unless they change V, it is not even a possibility. Starting to grant individual exceptions to the Unanimous Agreements would set a very dangerous precedent, and open up an entirely unnecessary can of worms.

33, I get a headache from smh at some of the things you say.

1) Do you really want ALL of NPC to have to vote unanimously every time MMM or NNN wants to simply submit a packet to a CC expansion effort? Does that sound feasible to you?

2) What makes you think that student turnover is the reason?

3) And what the heck do you mean by "simply not suitable?" OMG! sounds like you are in a membership selection meeting at the stereotypical Big Southern U that everyone rails against

Well, bless your heart!

Did not read all of the posts on this thread so I may be repeating an earlier note.

When NPC formed in 1902, several of the founding groups had chapters at what might be called junior colleges. Anyway, they were not accredited, four year colleges. In a couple of cases, the Alpha chapters of the groups were at such a college.

The original National Panhellenic Congress required member groups to give up such charters. Groups could have alumnae chapters, mothers' clubs and college chapters at accredited four year institutions only.

So I am surprised our current National Panhellenic Council is considering such a dramatic change. To have such groups at junior colleges is great - but why would they need to be NPC groups? I agree that this would not be in the best interests of the girls themselves if they choose to transition to a four year university to complete their career ambitions. In recent years it has been shared on this network that many campuses have two quotas - freshman and upper class - because having four years of membership ahead of you was already an advantage for PNMs in recruitment. Also agree with the few posts I read which pointed out that as likely as not, the university a woman chooses will not have the same groups as her JC did. Even if there was a match in groups on campus, would they be a match in interests?

The groups could have all started at the same time and they still would not be equal. That's not the nature of human beings.

Some groups would make choices that work out well and others wouldn't. Groups would adopt different growth strategies, membership retention strategies, expansion strategies, etc.

Will we ever know how things would have been if they had all started at the same time? No. That's the way the world works. The USA is only a few hundred years old and look what it has accomplished that countries thousands of years old have never come close to achieving.

Chi Omega came into existence decades after other groups and yet they are the largest organization now. One could argue that some of the groups that joined later might not even exist if they hadn't been added to NPC.

I’m just being blunt because I have no patience for pussyfooting with all the crap that’s going on these days. People keep posting about “CCs that are almost like 4 year universities.” That is not my experience, and the majority of the CC students I know of (older students trying to get a better job, freshmen who want to have a bare bones first year to save money, students who are trying to get basic credits as fast as possible and then transfer) are not good candidates for NPC sorority membership as it is now.

And quite frankly, you don’t get why I’m concerned about this because our sororities are in two completely different places as far as expansion opportunities are concerned. If you think chapters at community colleges are a good idea for DG, fine. I personally don’t think they’re a good idea for ASA. I sincerely hope all the groups vote (if this gets to a vote) for what suits them, not because they think it would be a good idea for someone else.

👏👏👏

Do you mean they get a bachelor’s degree?

https://study.com/blog/do-community-...r-degrees.html

https://www.communitycollegereview.c...unity-colleges

https://transfer.santarosa.edu/ca-co...helors-degrees

Here's another twist in the CC situation. I know someone whose daughter was very accomplished at a top public school. She opted to save money and went to CC, lived at home, and worked. Her plan was to transfer to a Big Ten university after two years. Then it was to transfer to a Division II University after two years. She was enrolled, had a room assignment, etc. She realized she did not want to pay the money for the experience.

Instead what she ended up doing was taking advantage of a new program in the state. She goes to CC for three years and then transfers to a state school for one year. She graduates with a full degree from that university.

Three years of CC and living at home = cheap
One year at state university (NCAA Division II) = pay it out of pocket, no debt, four year degree from a perfectly fine university

We're kidding ourselves if we think the coronavirus isn't going to accelerate this kind of thinking. With the degree she's pursuing (education) she will have zero problem finding a job after graduating from this school. She ticks all the other boxes too in terms of personality, etc. She would actually have been a great sorority member somewhere.

And no debt.

NPC could certainly qualify it to be only those CCs that offer 4 year degrees. They can craft it any way they want. But I do think it bears investigating rather than continuing to ignore the requests and changes in higher ed and the women who might want the sorority experience.

YES IT BEARS INVESTIGATING.

And it bears analyzing actual data, as opposed to relying on anecdotal stories of what you personally have observed, or your 'feeling'. Earlier I posted to a breakdown on demographics from Columbia University, which I don't think many have bothered to check out, or they'd know that 23% of students come from a household income of $106,000 or more, for example. 49 percent of Black students and 51 percent of Hispanic students who enrolled that year started at community colleges. Do we really want to diversify? This is a piece of that puzzle.

Ultimately, I am going to wait and see what the research committee finds out before deciding my opinion.

Amen, Belle!

CCAC had a few programs leading to a bachelors degree even almost 20 years ago, when my sister was thinking of going there to finish her education degree. I imagine it’s expanded from there, and they probably offer quite a few 4 year degrees these days.

College of DuPage, my local community college, has a very popular 3 + 1 program. You take 3 years of classes at COD, then one year taught by faculty from one of the partner universities on the COD campus.

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Point had already been made

Okay I'm speaking as someone who went to a big transfer campus and was aware of the schools people would come from: maybe this program could work if a CC looks at places where students transfer the most and then the NPCs would form CC chapters so if a campus has ABC they can associate with the ABC chapter on said campus? But that would take a lot of collaboration between the CC campus and the uni that has that sorority on it.

I highly doubt that the chapters at the 4-year college campuses are going to agree to affiliate the CC women automatically and that's a huge problem we've been discussing, cookiez--if they expect a seamless transition, it's unlikely to happen.

.

I see that and as people have stated we'll have to see if the NPC decides to go through with the program they certainly will have weighted out the pros and cons of it all.

Here in Texas, we have 2 programs that accept community college students. The one at Texas A&M is called Blinn Team and the one at the University of Texas is called PACE. Students attend CC + 1 class at the main university for Freshman year and are guaranteed admission if they attain a certain GPA, which I think is about a 3.2-3.5. I believe they are limited to certain majors, such as Communications, Education, Liberal Arts, and Social Work. Most of the sororities accept these transfer students although, if I am being honest, they are not usually at the top of their lists. Most of these students were of the caliber of wait list students at major universities which, in Texas, are those that were not in the top 10-15% of their graduating classes. This is clearly difficult for those that attend high-performing suburban high schools with high academic standards which, in every other state, would be sought after students by your state universities. That is why so many of our top students attend out-of-state universities, such as Oklahoma, Missouri, LSU, Ole Miss, Alabama, Auburn, and Arkansas.

I appreciate that you are trying to look at things from all angles. In San Diego County we have three public universities, one private university, and 8 community colleges. I'm just not sure how feasible it would be to work out the "combinations" in order to meet the affiliation needs of most women.

Vincennes University in Indiana is a 2 year school (with a very few 4 year degree offerings) and they have local sororities and fraternities. Somehow those seem to do fine even with a 2-year turnover. Maybe due to Vincennes being somewhat residential.

This is another thought I had as to why this task force was created. Are local groups forming at the CCs, the CCs are worried about risk management, and they want national groups to help shoulder the burden?

At one college where I taught (many of you know which one), the school forced the locals to nationalize. I expect it was due to liability issues, which were so bad that I really don't know why no one was seriously injured.

Vincennes University is an anomaly with a unique history. I wouldn't hold that institution up as an example compared to the typical 2-year community colleges found across the U.S.

Vincennes has been offering Bachelor Degrees since 2005, so may be allowable under today's rules of expansion. Vincennes first dormitory was in 1968.

There are a few other schools that currently or formerly had dorms while only offering 2 year programs.

Richard Bland College which is a two year that is part of the William and Mary System has dormitories, so that would fall into that group and UVA -Wise (which used to be Clinch Valley College) fell into that group prior to becoming a 4 year school.

Southwestern Oregon Community College currently falls into that group.

Texas 2 years that would qualify
 

- Blinn College in Brenham
- Kilgore College
- Tyler Junior College
- Navarro College

There's Sullivan County Community College, part of the SUNY system. I learned about that one from watching the documentary "Three Identical Strangers." Two of the three triplets went to school there.

Maybe Jacksonville College too? Texas State Technical College?

I feel like Texas has a bunch of what I would call "little hybrids" that would fall under this model. They have 2 year and 4 year degrees, and many have residential life/dorms.

Sidebar - have you watched "Cheer" on Netflix about Navarro College? Sooo good.

LOVED "Cheer"!

As an ex cheerleader Cheer was so good! Would 100% give it a recommendation.

Yup, this is becoming more and more a thing at community colleges and I expect we'll only see it continue to expand with the realities of COVID. My local community college has two bachelors degrees on offer, both pretty new programs.
https://www.austincc.edu/news/2019/0...te-bsn-program

https://www.austincc.edu/news/2019/0...ee-spring-2020


That's pretty accurate about PACE, but remember right now automatic admission to UT is top 6% of your high school class. You can be top 7% and not get in. I can't speak to sorority recruitment but there are some out of this world PACE students from an academic standpoint.

Something kind of like that is happening with fraternities at UT. (UT chapters underground pledging community college students.) Not with sororities though.

Subscribing to this thread. This is fascinating to me and I think it really needs to be looked at hard if trends with virtual degrees and push back on exclusivity of Greek life continues. We may need more city based organizations like NPHC groups. Would definitely help for alumnae engagement.

This is very true. Depending on your test scores - you can come out of these suburban HS in the top of the 3rd quarter (3.5gpa) - but qualify for near in state tuition at OSU, 'Bama, LSU, Ole Miss. I've written one TAMU reference (For a junior) the rest have been Arkansas, Ole Miss, OSU and Alabama. These High Schools have around 1250/25 average test scores. And that is the average. I think the state average ACT is 20.5.

But also the cost of college has skyrocketed. I found my first college bill cleaning out my mom's things last week. The whole bill, Tuition, Fees, Room and full meal plan was around $1600 in 1985. If you take into account inflation - that would be $3,830. My daughter's bill at a school in the UT system - before we cancelled the apartment for the semester - $10,845 (It's now $7345). That is a HUGE difference in price.

This whole COVID distance learning thing is once again bringing the value of the current college education structure into question.

I don't know what the answer is - but I think that at least in Texas - if the community college has 4 year degrees and a level of student retention, I can see having NPC orgs. But with the understanding that there is no guarantee that you can transfer your affiliation. Just like if I went to Texas State and transfered to UT.

Having pledged at a school without houses, but the houses were built and open by my senior year - I see the pluses of having the "traditional" sorority experience. But I still felt like I was having a full sorority experience before the house was built.

Bumping this interesting thread. Has any NPC group voted to expand to CCs should the NPC allow same?

Additionally, today marks the 119th anniversary of the NPC's founding.

Here's to 119 years and many more!

I have been looking around the NPC blog and haven't seen anything regarding it. Maybe as colleges reopen they'll look more into it.