Last week, the Board of Regents approved the merger of Georgia Perimeter College and Georgia State University. The consolidation of the two schools will result in the new GSU having over 50,000 students–making it the largest university in the state. A lot of details about the merger are unknown including how exactly it will take place, who will keep jobs, who will lose them, who will work on what campuses, and how the consolidated school will “have two different doors with separate admissions standards: one for university students, another for the community college students.”
As a GSU alum and employee, I’m interested to see how the merger works and affects both the city and the school. GSU has been growing and developing rapidly (adding football, getting new buildings, bidding on Turner Field, getting big donations, etc.), and I wonder how this consolidation will play into the university’s long-range plans and desire to bill itself as a leading research institution. Any merger of this size will be complicated, and I think it’s inevitable that some people will be hurt in the process. I just hope that whatever the “new school” looks like the school will work to provide the best education possible for its students.
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