For many colleges, financial woes often result in layoffs and academic program cuts, especially for those with low enrollments. But Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education, which has faced years of declining enrollment, announced a plan Monday aimed at avoiding those hardships: PASSHE is pursuing a course-sharing initiative designed to expand students’ access to specialized courses across its 14 campuses at a low cost. At full scale, system leaders say the plan will allow a student enrolled at a PASSHE campus that doesn’t offer a course they’re interested in—say, in special education—to take the course remotely from another campus and earn full credit, rather than lose out or travel hours to attend in person.
