If Iowa’s 15 community colleges are allowed to start offering four-year bachelor’s degrees —as Republican lawmakers have said is necessary and likely to happen—some of Iowa’s 27 private colleges and universities will shutter.
“Without any question and without any doubt and without being hyperbolic or anything else, if House Study Bill 533 should pass, some of our private colleges will close,” Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities President Gary Steinke told lawmakers during a committee discussion on the proposal to allow community colleges to expand their offerings from two-year associate’s degrees and certificates to the four-year bachelor’s degrees that Iowa’s public and private colleges and universities offer.
“Not all of them,” Steinke said about the privates that he expects will close due to lost enrollment from the increased community college competition. “But some of them will.”
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