College Guide
Blog
America’s academic institutions have to pay attention to the economy. The national and local economies, after all, determine the size of the institution’s endowment, how much students can spend to attend school, the job prospects of graduates, and, in the case of public institutions, the amount the college can expect form the state.
But is there such thing as too much attention to economics? One Georgia college is apparently moving across the state due to the location of an automobile factory. According to an article in the Newnan Times-Herald:
The college announced in a press release that it is relocating its traditional campus from East Point to West Point, Ga., to expand its capacity and athletic offerings. It will relocate its traditional campus in fall 2012…. The college also announced that it will expand its athletic programs to include club football, softball and cross country in 2011 and hopes to compete in the NAIA in football in 2012.
In addition to its relocation to West Point, Atlanta Christian College announced to students that it is changing its name to Point University as of July 1. Point University’s first semester of classes in West Point, the city at the Georgia-Alabama state line that is now home to the new Kia Manufacturing, will be in fall 2012.
That’s 75 miles away. The school has also, somewhat inexplicably, changed its mascot from the Charger to the Skyhawk. According to a recent piece by Paul Fain in Inside Higher Ed:
[Atlanta Christian College officials say] the massive Kia plant, which opened last year and will soon employ 3,000 workers, helped nudge West Point to the top of a list of 12 cities vying for the campus.
“We looked at a lot of small towns that look like college towns without a college,” says Dean Collins, Point’s president since 2006. A Georgia Institute of Technology study found that the Kia plant would be a major economic boon for West Point, and Collins liked the idea of moving “our little college into this community, while prices are still low.”
Atlanta Christian College was founded in 1937 by Judge Thomas Olin Hathcock. The college was originally located on his farm and existed primarily to devoted train ministers and missionaries.
The opinion of executives at Kia, a South Korean company that manufactures down-market vehicles, about this change was not recorded.
Facebook
Twitter
Walker on September 23, 2011 6:52 PM:
It depends on how much mobey the school was offered, but this is not unlike the story of Wake Forest. Wake Forest got its name because it started in Wake county - Raleigh. It moved to its current campus in Winston-Salem because of a massive grant from the families that ran the tobacco companies in the area. And Wake Forest turned out okay in the end.
Equal Opportunity Cynic on September 23, 2011 7:06 PM:
Also the University of Michigan started in Detroit. Per Wikipedia: "A group of businessmen called the Ann Arbor Land Company had set land aside in the village of Ann Arbor, trying to win a bid for a new state capital. When that did not happen, they offered it for sale to the state for use by the university."
Crissa on September 23, 2011 7:51 PM:
It's happened several times in California - smaller colleges get blocked in or outpriced by development and move to larger or better priced campuses. Especially Christian schools.
Recently, Bethany in Scotts Valley closed, after moving there decades ago from San Francisco. Another school is looking to move there from up north, though.
The accreditation process is what drives this: It's easier to buy or transplant accreditation than it is to develop a new one or lose one. It's strange, to me, that a school can seriously revamp without being inspected again.
David Martin on September 23, 2011 8:08 PM:
Small colleges with minimal facilities move all the time. In some states, there's been ongoing erosion of the importance of the older state universities, out in the hinterlands, in relation to what are usually newer urban universities. Examples:
University of Oregon and Oregon State vs. Portland State
University of Idaho vs. Boise State
Florida State University and Florida A&M in Tallahassee vs. newer state universities in Tampa, Orlando, Boca Raton, and Miami.
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa vs. Birmingham
On the other hand, Penn State has over 44,000 students on its main campus in the middle of nowhere. It's probably the most isolated large campus in the country (perhaps along with Cornell).
berttheclock on September 24, 2011 9:09 AM:
Portland State, actually, had to relocate due to a massive flood of the Columbia River. The original site was in the low lying flood plain and was set up in an abandoned Kaiser WWII boat building Quonset hut to provide education to returning vets on the GI Bill. However, just beginning classes with far more vets than imagined, the Columbia overflowed. The campus was relocated to downtown Portland, where it remains today.