Home Care In Cheyney, PA

Cheyney University, founded 182 years ago, has reached a point where its future has never looked more bleak.

The Delaware County historically black university is nearly $10 million short of being able to keep its doors open for the remainder of this academic year. Its enrollment has sunk to 469, the lowest level in at least four decades. And it’s looking increasingly likely the institution needs a miracle to happen to avoid losing its accreditation.

State System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Greenstein painted a brutally honest picture of the status of this system university for the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday. Greenstein said he doesn’t think closing Cheyney is the right move, but the nation’s oldest black institution of higher education can’t continue on its current path.

Cheyney is at “a watershed moment,” Greenstein said.

The system’s board is meeting next week to decide whether to loan $10 million to Cheyney to cover its shortfall for this year. That money would come out of allocations to the other 13 system universities and is on top of $43 million it already owes to its sister schools.

Beyond that, the system’s board also is going to have decide what path it wants to pursue with Cheyney going forward – with or without its accreditation.

The Middle States Commission on Higher Education will make a decision in November whether or not to renew the university’s accreditation.

By then, Cheyney has to demonstrate that it has complied with certain conditions that Middle States has set for it and given the school an unprecedented two years to meet. Two of those conditions have to do with balancing its budget, which it is not able to do this year.

Losing its accreditation would cost the university an important seal of approval enjoyed by many higher education institutions. More importantly, its students are unable to receive federal financial aid.

Greenstein told the panel of senators he sees only three options ahead for Cheyney and offered his opinion on each.

“One of them is to continue as we are, which in my professional opinion is not viable,” he said. “The second is to recommend to the Legislature that Cheyney be closed because only the Legislature has that authority. That in my professional opinion would be the wrong thing to do.

“A third path is to acknowledge the likelihood that our accreditation will be lost immediately to begin to plan for our students and our employees who deserve a future and need our attention,” he said.

That third option would involve working swiftly to continue state funding to put Cheyney on a different path. After the meeting, Greenstein clarified what that might look like.

“There’s a misconception that a viable future for Cheyney requires accreditation and that’s not true,” he said.

It could mean offering certificate and non-degree programming to meet workforce needs, an area where more higher education institutions are moving. Or it could mean Cheyney becomes a department or school and affiliates itself with an accredited university.

“There’s a world of opportunities out there,” he said. “It’s not the end of the world.”

The chancellor’s description of Cheyney’s situation, though, struck some emotional chords.

Sen. Vince Hughes, D-Philadelphia, a longtime champion of the university, is hoping for a miracle to save Cheyney. Hughes commended the university’s President Aaron Walton, who came on board two years ago, for the difficult decisions and program cuts he made to try to save its accreditation.

He also chastised lawmakers and governors for neglecting to invest in the university, which he noted has had only two new buildings erected on its campus over the past three decades. He also acknowledged some poor decision-making by campus officials who mismanaged $47 million in student financial dollars that may have to be paid back to the federal government. And the school also lost 3,000 applications over a four-year span, which didn’t help.

But beyond that, Hughes said dollar and cents can’t be the only factors that decide Cheyney’s future. Its place in American history also has to be considered.

“The notion that historically black colleges and universities, Cheyney and Lincoln, … is predicated on a history of discrimination that required a place to be in position to educate folks, who could not get that education somewhere else by law,” he said. “There is a role and a place for this institution.”

Ken Mash, the system’s faculty union president, was on hand to witness the exchange and said Hughes wasn’t the only one taken aback by the chancellor’s brutal honesty about Cheyney’s situation.

“People are attached to that university with good reason. The university was there to address ongoing continued discrimination in Pennsylvania and to see that go away and go away under those circumstances is extremely difficult for people including me,” Mash said.

He said the problems at Cheyney were evident 10 years ago and that the powers that be chose to ignore them.

“I’ve seen people shrug their shoulders and say ‘That’s Cheyney’ as if that was some kind of an explanation for why they were willing to accept something at that university that they would never accepted at any other institution," he said. "It’s a malignant indifference that’s what it is.”

What’s more, he said there are students who need an institution like Cheyney that will not be served if it goes away.

“It’s just awful,” Mash said.

Upon returning to his office, Mash held a video conference with Cheyney faculty to inform them of the conversation about their school and the discussion about its accreditation. He said they were stunned and their immediate concern was for the students and what would happen with them.

That was confirmed in an emailed statement by Cheyney faculty member B.J. Mullaney.

“First, as a faculty member I, and I believe all my colleagues, want what is best for our students,” she said. “Chancellor Greenstein discussed several possibilities. We really don't have enough information in a situation that is still nebulous. We know that closing Cheyney does not seem to help anyone. What we hope is that any plan will result in the best possible outcome for Cheyney students.”

Whatever happens with Cheyney, Greenstein told the committee there are lessons to be learned from the circumstances that led it to where it is today.

“I hope we will take the time and create the space to learn those lessons so they will never be repeated in this commonwealth and in this country,” he said. “Cheyney’s history, the institution’s brand, the revered service that is offered to its students, its alumni, they deserve, they demand nothing less than that.”

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During a candid budget hearing Thursday, lawmakers heard a bleak tale of Pennsylvania’s system of higher education.

In particular, Cheyney University risks losing its accreditation next year amid declining enrollment and growing debt.

Enrollment across the 14 state-owned schools has decreased by 18 percent since 2010, dropping to less than 100,000 students in fall 2018. Cheyney, the country’s oldest historically black college, has seen a particularly steep decline — dropping from 1,586 students in 2010 to 469 in 2018.

Public university enrollment is down nationwide, in part due to declining numbers of high school graduates.

Daniel Greenstein, who took over as chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education last fall, told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the universities are working on ways to attract more students and prepare them for the workforce, but made clear it will be difficult without more state funding.

“Next year is going to be a tough year,” said Greenfield. “You have to remember that our universities have been basically in recession management for well over a decade. There isn’t much left to cut.”

Over the past four years, the state has steadily increased funding for public universities, following six years of decreased or stagnant budgets, but funding remains lower compared to the start of the recession.

“We were essentially at the same place for funding 10 years ago as we are today,” State Sen. Judith Schwank, D-Berks, noted Thursday.

In 2018, the system received $468 million from the state, about 27 percent of its total budget. The average across the country is around 54 percent. Pennsylvania ranks 48 nationally for state share of public higher education funding.

Tuition hikes have made up for the gap, making Pennsylvania’s state universities considerably more expensive than the national average.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, average in-state tuition at a public university is $6,131. In Pennsylvania, that price tag is $12,186.

That’s compared to $8,335 in Delaware, $9,338 in New Jersey, $6,226 in Ohio, $6,870 in New York, and $5,650 in West Virginia.

In some states, including California, Texas, and Washington, the rates public colleges charge for non-residents is cheaper than Pennsylvania’s in-state tuition.

Greenstein told senators that this puts the state-owned universities in competition not only with private and community colleges, but also with state schools nationwide. He estimated that the system will soon face a $70 million deficit, and said funding gaps cannot be made up by increasing tuition without alienating students from low- and moderate-income families.

Senator Scott Martin, (R-Lancaster), questioned whether the university system has done enough to streamline operations. As student enrollment has decreased by 18 percent, staff reduced by just 8 percent, he said.

“We have not yet done everything we can to align our budgets with our revenues,” said Greenstein. Increasing retention and enrollment is a priority, he said, in part by looking to attract new students. He also spoke of working with the faculty union on a phased retirement plan for long-serving staff.

At the same time, he said the greatest tuition decreases could come from Pennsylvania increasing its state contribution to the national average. If they did so, said Greenstein, the system could lower tuition to around $9,500. That would require an additional $666 million in state subsidies.

“These are public policy choices,” said Greenstein. “Those are choices we have made in this state and they are choices which, frankly, over ten years, in my opinion, will be devastating to pathways into and beyond the middle class, and ultimately the workforce.”

The state budget for PASSHE is currently $468 million. The system requested an increase in state aid of almost $38 million, or 8 percent. Governor Tom Wolf has proposed an increase of $7 million.

Last week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor, (R-York), seemed to lay the public university systems’ problems at its own feet, telling Greenstein at a separate budget hearing that lawmakers have “lost faith” in the system.

“In many cases, you can go to other schools at a cheaper cost than you can to our state system, and we have to get back to that if we want the system to survive,” he said.

This week, by contrast, lawmakers thanked Greenstein for his candor, and asked questions about how the universities can better compete for students.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes, laid the blame with lawmakers.

“Governors and legislatures have failed the system dramatically,” he said.

Hughes, a trustee at Cheyney University, also questioned Greenstein about the future of that institution. Greenstein gave a harsh assessment, citing six-year graduation rates of just 15-25 percent, with nearly a third of students defaulting on their loans.

“These are in my opinion the most deserving students we enroll in the system, and we are delivering results for them that are weak,” he said.

Cheyney owes $43 million in debt to the public university system, which Greenstein plans to pay down with the proceeds from other campuses. He says it will likely incur another $9 to $10 million in debt this year. Those debts have put Cheyney’s accreditation in danger, which would mean the school could no longer grant degrees.

Greenstein laid out three possible paths for the university: continue as is, which he dismissed as unviable; closure, which he called “the wrong thing to do.”

Or, Greenstein said, “acknowledge the likelihood that the university will lose accreditation” later this year, and pivot to another educational model.

“There is real innovation in higher education today in arenas that do not require accreditation,” said Greenstein, pointing to various forms of workforce training or technical education. “The potential opportunity for Cheyney not only to survive and thrive, but to create a model that others may need to follow into the future is very high.”

Hughes pushed back on that interpretation, pointing to increased applications and deposits by accepted students over the previous year.

“The notion of HBCUs is not predicated on hard and fast numbers. It’s predicated on a history of discrimination that required a place to be in position to educate folks who could not be educated elsewhere by law,” Hughes said.

Last year, the university opened two new institutes to try to reverse declining numbers, and began to invest more in recruitment. Greenstein appeared to be skeptical.

“I wish the chancellor would have been more optimistic in his comments,” said Hughes when reached after the hearing.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Browne, (R-Lehigh), closed the meeting with a call to action.

“None of this is going to happen unless we make some hard decisions. And I think we’ve been in denial for a long time,” he said. “We’re just treading water. And, if we keep treading water, the only people at risk will be our young people that really need the value of a higher education institution, and we have the assets here to do it.”

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During a candid budget hearing Thursday, lawmakers heard a bleak tale of Pennsylvania’s system of higher education.

In particular, Cheyney University risks losing its accreditation next year amid declining enrollment and growing debt.

Enrollment across the 14 state-owned schools has decreased by 18 percent since 2010, dropping to less than 100,000 students in fall 2018. Cheyney, the country’s oldest historically black college, has seen a particularly steep decline — dropping from 1,586 students in 2010 to 469 in 2018.

Public university enrollment is down nationwide, in part due to declining numbers of high school graduates.

Daniel Greenstein, who took over as chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education last fall, told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the universities are working on ways to attract more students and prepare them for the workforce, but made clear it will be difficult without more state funding.

“Next year is going to be a tough year,” said Greenfield. “You have to remember that our universities have been basically in recession management for well over a decade. There isn’t much left to cut.”

Over the past four years, the state has steadily increased funding for public universities, following six years of decreased or stagnant budgets, but funding remains lower compared to the start of the recession.

“We were essentially at the same place for funding 10 years ago as we are today,” State Sen. Judith Schwank, D-Berks, noted Thursday.

In 2018, the system received $468 million from the state, about 27 percent of its total budget. The average across the country is around 54 percent. Pennsylvania ranks 48 nationally for state share of public higher education funding.

Tuition hikes have made up for the gap, making Pennsylvania’s state universities considerably more expensive than the national average.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, average in-state tuition at a public university is $6,131. In Pennsylvania, that price tag is $12,186.

That’s compared to $8,335 in Delaware, $9,338 in New Jersey, $6,226 in Ohio, $6,870 in New York, and $5,650 in West Virginia.

In some states, including California, Texas, and Washington, the rates public colleges charge for non-residents is cheaper than Pennsylvania’s in-state tuition.

Greenstein told senators that this puts the state-owned universities in competition not only with private and community colleges, but also with state schools nationwide. He estimated that the system will soon face a $70 million deficit, and said funding gaps cannot be made up by increasing tuition without alienating students from low- and moderate-income families.

Senator Scott Martin, (R-Lancaster), questioned whether the university system has done enough to streamline operations. As student enrollment has decreased by 18 percent, staff reduced by just 8 percent, he said.

“We have not yet done everything we can to align our budgets with our revenues,” said Greenstein. Increasing retention and enrollment is a priority, he said, in part by looking to attract new students. He also spoke of working with the faculty union on a phased retirement plan for long-serving staff.

At the same time, he said the greatest tuition decreases could come from Pennsylvania increasing its state contribution to the national average. If they did so, said Greenstein, the system could lower tuition to around $9,500. That would require an additional $666 million in state subsidies.

“These are public policy choices,” said Greenstein. “Those are choices we have made in this state and they are choices which, frankly, over ten years, in my opinion, will be devastating to pathways into and beyond the middle class, and ultimately the workforce.”

The state budget for PASSHE is currently $468 million. The system requested an increase in state aid of almost $38 million, or 8 percent. Governor Tom Wolf has proposed an increase of $7 million.

Last week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor, (R-York), seemed to lay the public university systems’ problems at its own feet, telling Greenstein at a separate budget hearing that lawmakers have “lost faith” in the system.

“In many cases, you can go to other schools at a cheaper cost than you can to our state system, and we have to get back to that if we want the system to survive,” he said.

This week, by contrast, lawmakers thanked Greenstein for his candor, and asked questions about how the universities can better compete for students.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes, laid the blame with lawmakers.

“Governors and legislatures have failed the system dramatically,” he said.

Hughes, a trustee at Cheyney University, also questioned Greenstein about the future of that institution. Greenstein gave a harsh assessment, citing six-year graduation rates of just 15-25 percent, with nearly a third of students defaulting on their loans.

“These are in my opinion the most deserving students we enroll in the system, and we are delivering results for them that are weak,” he said.

Cheyney owes $43 million in debt to the public university system, which Greenstein plans to pay down with the proceeds from other campuses. He says it will likely incur another $9 to $10 million in debt this year. Those debts have put Cheyney’s accreditation in danger, which would mean the school could no longer grant degrees.

Greenstein laid out three possible paths for the university: continue as is, which he dismissed as unviable; closure, which he called “the wrong thing to do.”

Or, Greenstein said, “acknowledge the likelihood that the university will lose accreditation” later this year, and pivot to another educational model.

“There is real innovation in higher education today in arenas that do not require accreditation,” said Greenstein, pointing to various forms of workforce training or technical education. “The potential opportunity for Cheyney not only to survive and thrive, but to create a model that others may need to follow into the future is very high.”

Hughes pushed back on that interpretation, pointing to increased applications and deposits by accepted students over the previous year.

“The notion of HBCUs is not predicated on hard and fast numbers. It’s predicated on a history of discrimination that required a place to be in position to educate folks who could not be educated elsewhere by law,” Hughes said.

Last year, the university opened two new institutes to try to reverse declining numbers, and began to invest more in recruitment. Greenstein appeared to be skeptical.

“I wish the chancellor would have been more optimistic in his comments,” said Hughes when reached after the hearing.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Browne, (R-Lehigh), closed the meeting with a call to action.

“None of this is going to happen unless we make some hard decisions. And I think we’ve been in denial for a long time,” he said. “We’re just treading water. And, if we keep treading water, the only people at risk will be our young people that really need the value of a higher education institution, and we have the assets here to do it.”

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CHEYNEY, Pa. - Students, staff and faculty are back-to-school at Cheyney University as in-person classes are underway.

“Rembering to put the mask on every day, that’s something that nobody is used to,” remarked Nathan Pettus.

It isn’t how Nathan Pettus and James Ramsey, or any of the other incoming freshman, pictured their first year of college. A quiet campus, students masked up and heading into socially distanced classrooms at Cheyney.

“It’s very weird. Kind of nerve-wracking, but it’s just something that we have to go through. This is going to be the new norm,” Ramsey stated.

But, some argue it shouldn’t be.

Ahead of Monday’s first day of classes, which began two weeks earlier than originally scheduled, Ivan Turnipseed, Chair for the Cheyney University Faculty Senate, issued a statement saying the school’s faculty wanted to continue remotely learning, with no in-person instruction, even with the university’s strictly enforcing masks, social distancing and screening.

“It’s not enough, the reality is that it’s not necessary during a pandemic for faculty to have to be in an unsafe environment, especially when we were effectively trained to teach otherwise,” Turnipseed explained.

University officials say there were not enough faculty over the summer that got their certification to teach online in order to go fully virtual across campus for the fall semester.

But, Turnipseed argues that was the same case in the spring. But, the university trained them and they pulled it off.

“Since they wisely made sure everyone was trained to give remote instruction, why can’t we do that now?” Turnipseed questioned.

“Me personally, I wanted to go virtual. I thought it was the safer and better alternative,” junior Tyler Birts stated.

While some students agree the in-person classes are not necessary right now, other students say they wanted to come back. After day one of classes, so far, they feel safe.

“I did feel comfortable because we were so far away from each other,” junior Kavana Johnson said.

“My parents, they were very scared to send me back to school, but I told them I wanted to be here for my education because not everything is offered online,” junior Jailyn Henry added.

___

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Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, located near Cheyney, Pennsylvania, was founded on February 25, 1837, making it the oldest predominantly African American institution of higher education in the United States. It was originally known as the African Institute was renamed the Institute of Colored Youth in 1852.

The monetary funds to start the institution were bequeathed by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist. Humphreys was born on a plantation in the West Indies and came to Philadelphia in 1764. After seeing many African Americans lose employment to more skilled immigrants, he provided in his will $10,000 to start an institution that would teach young African American boys and girls the skills they needed to be more competitive in the job market. Originally located in Philadelphia, the school taught basic subjects such as reading, writing and math as well as mechanics and agriculture. Humphreys envisioned the institute training the teachers who would then instruct far more young women and men.

In 1902, the school purchased a farm owned by another Quaker, George Cheyney, and relocated 25 miles west of Philadelphia. Booker T. Washington served as keynote speaker at the school’s reopening in 1905. In 1914 the school was renamed to Cheyney Training School for Teachers after receiving aid from the State of Pennsylvania. It became Cheyney State College in 1959 and in 1983 the institution adopted its current name, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

Cheyney University of Pennsylvania remains a small institution with an estimated 1,600 students enrolled in October 2009. With a School of Arts and Sciences and a School of Educational and Professional Studies, Cheyney now offers over 30 baccalaureate degrees and a variety of MA degrees in Education. The vast majority of Cheyney’s students are African American. When Cheyney University of Pennsylvania was founded, it was originally for African Americans only. The university now accepts people of all races and religions.

Cheyney University’s most famous alumni include long time CBS News correspondent Ed Bradley; early 20th Century architect Julian Abele, Robert Bogle, publisher of the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest black newspaper in the nation; Robert Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a conservative think tank, and multimillionaire businessman Craig T. Welburn.

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Cite this entry in APA format:

Patterson, V. (2010, July 06). Cheyney University of Pennsylvania (1837- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/cheyney-university-pennsylvania-1837/

Source of the author's information:

Charlene Conyers, A Living Legend – The History of Cheyney University, 1837-1951 (Philadelphia: Cheyney University Press, 1990); “History of Cheney University”, Cheney University of Pennsylvania http://www.cheyney.edu/about-cheyney-university/cheyney-history.cfm; Nineteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Institute for Colored Youth (Philadelphia: W. Hi Pile Printers, 1871).