BCC remakes itself with new name, campus closure

A young woman filming a college marketing commercial last week looked into the camera and repeated her line: "Rowan College at Burlington County: Your path to success."

It won't be only the students picking a new "path to success." The school, facing declining state funding and a shrinking pool of high school graduates, has rebranded itself and is reconfiguring its campuses to remain a viable option for students in an increasingly competitive environment.

Founded in 1969 as Burlington County College and starting with a campus in Pemberton, the school has grown to more than 9,000 students in Pemberton, Mount Laurel, Willingboro, Mount Holly, and the joint military base.

Last week, the school unveiled its new look as Rowan College at Burlington County, part of an agreement with Rowan University to guarantee admission there for qualified community college graduates.

Hoping to create a leaner, stronger option to meet students' needs, the college also is closing its Pemberton campus, planning new buildings and facilities in Mount Laurel, reorganizing its administration and budget, and opening a new workforce development institute.

"My goal was to move as quickly as we could to what I believe what the modern community college should look like in the 21st century, and that involved making some tough decisions in terms of going to really our core issue, and that's affordability," college president Paul Drayton said last week.

When he became president in March, Drayton said his focus would be on the college's finances, given the questions of future funding and enrollment.

Long-term sustainability concerns are echoed across the state and region; as state funding declines, tuition becomes a larger funding source. But tuition revenue is dependent on enrollment, and community colleges can see vastly different student numbers each semester, making it hard to predict.

Demographics are also a factor. Projections by the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics estimate that the Northeast United States will have 481,850 high school graduates in the 2020-21 school year, down from 552,289 in the 2007-08 year. Just a few years ago, the number of high school graduates in New Jersey was rising dramatically.

"The traditional market for all of these colleges is not as robust as it was. They really have to be much more entrepreneurial," said Davis Jenkins, a senior research associate at Columbia University's Community College Research Center.

While college affordability is being discussed generally, community colleges feel a unique pinch: They have limited, unstable funding even as students demand greater assurances that they will be able to transfer to four-year colleges or directly enter the workforce.

"All of these dynamics are changing. And so if you see that coming, and you sit still, then you'll just slowly wither," Drayton said.

Drayton described the decision to close the Pemberton campus as driven by finances: Both the Mount Laurel and Pemberton campuses need renovation, but the college can afford to update only one location. The college will save about $4.5 million a year by closing Pemberton, he said.

The push to maintain affordability and channel more students into bachelor's degree programs helped lead to the new partnership with Rowan University. Students who finish their associate's degrees above a minimum grade-point average are automatically granted admission to Rowan University, similar to a program at the former Gloucester County College.

The Burlington County school had previously touted a partnership with Drexel University, which offered on-campus degree completion programs at several community colleges in the region.

Drexel announced last winter that it is closing that program, which did not offer conditional acceptance. Drexel professors taught classes on the community college campuses, as Rowan University professors will.

The new programs and partnerships improve on previous ideas, Drayton said, with lessons from the past guiding the college's decisions.

While taking the Rowan name, the Burlington and Gloucester County community colleges will retain transfer agreements with multiple colleges. Burlington signed a multiyear agreement with Rowan, and officials at both schools will monitor success.

"I hope that I build a system that is strong enough, that is sustainable enough, that it will last a long, long time, and forever," said Rowan University president Ali A. Houshmand. "I hope that one day we will be in so many ways like the Penn State model, where all of these satellite campuses are the county colleges."

Burlington administrators say they also will closely watch the effects of closing the Pemberton campus, which the school says is attended by one in five students. The college may consider shuttle buses to Mount Laurel.

The tension between affordability and accessibility can increase as the community colleges respond to the new higher education environment, said Jenkins, the Columbia University researcher, but he applauded the Burlington County school's decisions.

"To me, it sounds like they're being responsive, which is actually incredible," said Jenkins, who cited other community colleges, including in Chicago and Georgia, as taking potentially risky moves, such as having some programs offered at only one campus.

"We're seeing institutions across the country that are doing bold things, and they seem to be thriving, and the ones that are sitting around - and this is true, I'm sure, of community colleges in New Jersey and in every other state, Pennsylvania and the like - they're going to be in trouble," he said.

Drayton has his fingers crossed.

"While everyone else is really trying to figure out what they're going to do, and what the next step is, and how they're going to be affordable, we're saying, 'Hey, guess what? We have a plan,' " he said. "And we think we've figured this out, and we are absolutely a terrific option for you to consider when you're looking at both the academic part of this, as well as the financial part."