YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown State University begins fall 2024 with more than 50 new associate and certificate degree programs, a result of the pending closure of the Mahoning Valley’s only community college.
YSU President Bill Johnson says the work to establish those programs at YSU started last December “to fill the void of educational choices for students that have been disenfranchised by the collapse of Eastern Gateway Community College.”
Johnson became YSU’s 10th president Jan. 21. The start of the fall semester kicks off his full academic year in that office.
Eastern Gateway, based in Steubenville with a campus in downtown Youngstown, stopped enrolling students after the spring 2024 semester and will begin dissolution Oct. 31.
YSU plans to fill the educational chasm that will be left by the Eastern Gateway closure, Johnson says.
“We’re going to be the only four-year university in our state – among the 14 major research universities – that covers the full continuum of education, from credentials and certificates for immediate entry into workforce after high school, to associate degrees, right on up through bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees, all under one university system,” he says.
YSU also plans to open a campus in Steubenville, ideally at the Eastern Gateway campus, although that won’t happen this fall.
“Our plan is we would like to use that facility right there and continue providing what we believe is going to be a significant step up in the quality of education for the entire region,” Johnson says.
However, because of an ongoing lawsuit against Eastern Gateway and that college’s lingering liabilities, that can’t happen yet.
YSU is offering classes virtually and enrolling former Eastern Gateway students in Youngstown.
It’s also offering a reduced associate degree tuition rate of $265 per credit hour to make it affordable for the former community college students. The rate applies to new associate programs as well as those already in place.
Johnson doesn’t believe it’s right to charge someone who would attend a community college the same amount you would charge a student pursuing a bachelor’s or graduate degree.
“The gift, the treasure, of a community college structure in our state is that it gives a lot of people a chance to get started on their education,” he says. “They may go on to get a four-year degree, but it gives them a chance at an affordable rate that they can afford.”
Eastern Gateway has struggled with finances for the last few years after the U.S. Department of Education ordered it to stop its free college benefit program.
That program allowed labor union members from across the country to attend classes and earn degrees at no cost to them.
Enrollment grew to more than 40,000 students, most of whom attended online classes. Enrollment before the free college program was about 4,000.
The education department said the college was charging Pell Grant recipients more than non-Pell students. The department placed the college under a monitoring classification that required the college to use its own resources to credit student accounts and wait for federal student aid reimbursements from the federal department.
To answer questions about the value of a college education, the YSU president has launched a series of opinion/editorial features in regional publications touting the return on investment of a YSU education.
“Look, we need the doers, the makers, the builders,” Johnson says. “We need to improve our workforce at that level. That’s where the credentials and certificates and associate degree programs come from. That’s what they’re going to address. But we’ve also got to have the next generation of visionaries, creators, designers, engineers, dreamers that will look at the next generation of problems and challenges” and how to address issues like AI, quantum computing, technological advances and hypersonic weaponry.
YSU and other higher education institutions have to be nimble, he says.
“We’ve got to be adaptable,” Johnson says. “We’ve got to be agile and flexible so that we can address workforce needs and technological changes as they come.”
That was his plan even before Eastern Gateway trustees decided to close the college.
“That was certainly one of my goals when I was going through the interview process…,” he says. That was one of the goals “I was going to be moving toward anyway. We want to be not just a university. We want to be the university of choice for our region here, and we’re working very hard to provide that continuum of education choices for our students.”
PENGUIN PREP
A new initiative this year is Penguin Prep which Johnson says the university is prototyping. It’s for students who don’t quite qualify for YSU admission “because either their ACT score or their GPA is not what it should be. But we’re finding a way to open the door, because a lot of those students struggle because of factors that are not of their own,” Johnson says.
Those students have graduated from high school but may not think they’re college material, he says. They’re working through the acceptance process and came to campus during the summer and worked with students from the Sokolov Honors College who are mentoring them.
“This [was the] first tranche of students,” Johnson says. “We work with the school districts to identify the students with the administrators of the school districts, plus which students [they] think are of that mindset.”
He says he was one of the students who didn’t think he was college material.
STUDENT CENTER
Plans are on track – although not all of the money has been raised – for the renovation of Kilcawley, the student center.
“It’s home away from home for what we think is going to be 11,000-plus students. And it’s also the gathering place for businesses and industry to come in, meet with our students, hold their meetings here, engage with our students,” he says.
The estimated project cost tops $44 million and YSU trustees set a $15 million fundraising goal, a university spokeswoman says in an email.
“YSU Foundation records that there is $4.375 million in cash gifts and pledges,” the spokeswoman says.
The project also was awarded $9.75 million in the most recent state capital budget.
The work involves modernizing the 163,000-square-foot building that houses restaurants, offices and meeting, event and gathering spaces.
“We know we’re gonna have to finance some of this. But we want to raise as much of that money as we possibly can through outside sources to minimize the amount of debt that we’re going to have to carry,” the YSU president says. “We owe it to the students that come here to give them a state-of-the-art, high quality place to meet, to gather, to learn, to perpetuate a philosophy of lifelong learning.”
Kilcawley was constructed in 1964, with additions in 1971 and 1979. Johnson says it needs to be modernized.
“It’s your typical 1960s kind of architecture: long hallways, a lot of unusable space,” he says.
Plans call for a smaller building with more common space and a centralized location for the restaurants housed there.
SOME COLLEGE, NO DEGREE
Jennifer Pintar, YSU provost and vice president of academic affairs, says the university, with the help of a marketing company, will reach out beginning early next year to those who are 25 and older who have some college but no degree to try to get them to return to complete their studies. Courses that they would take would be online.
An internal marketing campaign will target those younger than 25 with on-campus courses.
“Launching a large online program aimed at recruiting students with some college but no degree is crucial in today’s educational landscape, particularly as the demand for a skilled workforce continues to rise,” according to documentation provided by Pintar.
Nearly 1.4 million Ohioans are among those who earned some college credit but left before securing a degree.
“This initiative aligns with Ohio’s broader efforts, such as the Ohio College Comeback Compact, which seeks to re-engage these students by offering financial and academic support,” the document says. “By providing accessible and flexible online education, the program will address the barriers that have historically prevented many from completing their degrees.”
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS
Johnson characterizes YSU’s relationships with the business community as “improving every single day.”
He referred to Dawn Inc., a Warren commercial building contractor.
“They said, ‘We want to provide a scholarship but we want to select the students,” Johnson explains. “‘We want to do an interview process because we know what kind of engineering support we need, and we want to provide a scholarship and an internship.’”
They wanted to pay the students to work during the summer and then pay for their tuition in the fall. The university worked it out with the company.
“Well, that worked so well, we got a call from the president who said, ‘We don’t want to do one student. We want to do two, because we found a couple of really high quality catches in the engineering department and we want to offer them both scholarships.’”
That information was publicized and another engineering student contacted Johnson, inquiring about getting a scholarship too. Dawn Inc. interviewed the third student and decided to offer him the same opportunity.
“We’re looking to expand that and we’ve got other companies that are looking to do the same kind of thing,” Johnson says.
Pictured at top: Youngstown State University President Bill Johnson, who is beginning his first full academic year on the job, stands outside of his office in Tod Hall.