Merging Colleges

Hello Everyone!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends. If you didn't, I am sorry, maybe next year. This time around, my blogs with focus on public affair's issues: local, sate, and national. This semester, I am taking a public affairs reporting class and our assignment is to keep an ongoing blog, similar to the one I wrote last semester.

Our first blog assignment, if you want to call it that is to write about a issue happening locally. The issue I will write about is both a state and local issue, which is the merging of colleges. I find the article interesting, because though Savannah Colleges and Universities are not listed in the merging plans, there were talks a few years ago about merging Savannah State and Armstrong Atlantic, I think it was my freshman year (2008) when people were talking. Someone told me that every ten years or so, the discussion comes up and people debate and chat then it dies down after while.

But, I do wonder now that merging college and universities around the state of Georgia are becoming a reality, if merging Savannah State and Armstrong Atlantic could possibly be a reality as well.

According to the Savannah Morning News article, "Merging colleges makes some magic" the Board of Regents in Atlanta voted unanimously on Tuesday to combine eight colleges into four. The schools include: Waycross College and South Georgia College, Macon State College and Middle Georgia College, Gainesville State College and North Georgia College & State University, and Augusta State University and Georgia Health Sciences University.

No word when this is set to happen, or figures on how much money merging with save and how much money will be put out in order for these merges to happen. I will do a follow up blog when more info comes out, but I found it interesting when Chancellor Huckaby said he avoided targeting the three historically black schools even though they share the same zip codes as the white schools, because of past attempts have failed i.e. Armstrong Atlantic and Savannah State. And I wonder, because he makes it seem like more mergers will come, if race will become a factor of why schools do/will not merge. I know race is a tool used in everyday politics, so I will assume it will play a huge roll in the merging of colleges and universities.

More to come in future blogs, just wanted my readers to start thinking.