Will CEU someday merge with tech center?
The Utah Board of Regents considered the notion at its meeting Friday at the University of Utah.
CEU has been around since the 1930s and the two public institutions have been co-existing since 1992, but issues of redundant course offerings and competition for state funding have helped raised the idea of a merger.
"I'm not even sure what merger means," CEU President Ryan Thomas said in an interview.
The main goal Thomas and SATC President Miles Nelson share is to best serve the students' needs instead of competing for their business.
While competition between the schools exists, they already share some functions on one campus or the other — all accounting work, for example, takes place on the CEU campus.
Neither Nelson nor Thomas said they fear a merger, but Nelson wants to take a year to study it. Others disagree.
"If we need a merger, let's put it on the table," said Rich Kendell, state commissioner of higher education. "I think we ought to get it done."
A merger, Thomas noted, may only mean the two schools are "co-located" or that they share some facilities. No one talked about a possible name change for either school.
A poor economy and a decline in population in the Price area, once a mining mecca in Utah, were also cited as reasons for studying the idea of a merger.
"I think the circumstances in that part of the state need a hard look," Kendell said.
In recent years, for example, CEU has had to recruit students from outside the area from which it normally draws business, or it has cut programs and fired faculty.
"We are not bleeding," Thomas said of CEU's financial stability. But he agreed that looking into some kind of collaboration is "appropriate."
The issue was added at the last minute to the regents' meeting agenda following a recent visit to Price by Kendell and regents Chairman Nolan Karras.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com
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