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The state College Board has directed Mississippi State University and Mississippi University for Women to explore consolidating operations, a move that MUW’s president says “is not a merger,” and would end with The W remaining a stand-alone institution.
The state College Board and university presidents are meeting in Jackson today.
The two schools will name coordinators to “develop functional teams from the two universities to review the operations. We will carefully and deliberately examine all possibilities before taking any action,” MUW President Claudia Limbert said.
In a separate statement, MSU President Mark Keenum said that the arrangement “simply involves one university helping another during extraordinary times.”
“IHL Commissioner Hank Bounds and IHL Board members asked us to reach out to a sister institution, and we have agreed to do that,” Keenum said. “It is my hope that sharing back-office resources will achieve efficiencies and allow MUW to continue to play a vital role in the higher education system in our state.”
After several months of work, a Mississippi State committee released a series of its own cost-cutting proposals Wednesday, which included combining the College of Forest Resources and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and merging or realigning other academic departments with similar missions.
Read complete article at Commercial Dispatch.
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