MLive reports on yet another small healthcare program at risk.

Because colleges in other states have campuses here, Michigan students pursuing healthcare degrees have more program choices closer to home.

Concordia's PA program is at risk in part due to legalities few understand. They are not only bizarre, but costly to healthcare programs.

Michigan participates in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA) Program, which claims to streamline interstate regulatory costs. Last term, House Bill 4982 extended Michigan membership in SARA.

However, in 2022, Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) collected $389.9 million in revenues from colleges and universities for the SARA program, including https://www.michigan.gov/leo/bureaus-agencies/wd/ps s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">healthcare programs. Such costs eventually come out of students' pockets, or their taxpayer parents'. With federal funding drying up, such costs require close scrutiny.

SARA is a workaround for genuine interstate reciprocity in higher ed. Reciprocity is a legal way of states saying to each other, "You let us build colleges there, we let you build them here."

States and schools should reduce root cause regulatory barriers to higher education start-ups. Doing so would make this LEO tax and middleman role irrelevant, and reduce pipeline costs for healthcare.

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2025/04/as-ann-arbor-college-downsizes-school-leaders-prop-up-this-professional-program.html

As Ann Arbor college ‘downsizes,’ school leaders prop up this professional program

Jackie Smith    |     Apr. 20, 2025 

ANN ARBOR, MI – A group of physician assistant students waited casually one morning in a hall outside of exam rooms in Concordia University Ann Arbor’s north building.

Some were seated on the floor — packets of material strewn neatly about and bags or small cases with equipment like tuning forks and reflex hammers in their laps. All of them waited for their turn to test skills in a mock neurological exam.

Student Claire Froumis said they work with actors in some test exams, but it was easier for classmates in the cohort of 35 to work with each other instead. And for one major reason.

 

“We’re all very close. It’s a lot of work, but we’re getting through it together. We support each other very well,” Froumis said. At 22, she joked she was “one of the babies” in the group, now in their second semester, training in PA studies.

The group setting such as for PA students may be one of increasing frequency at Concordia. As the private Lutheran university nears shutting down traditional undergraduate academics and athletics programs, administrators are refocusing on online schooling and health professional curriculum.

“We have seen the most growth in our campus over the past five years within the health professions,” said Erin Laverick, CU’s associate vice president of academic and student success.

He pointed to new degrees such as the doctorates of occupational therapy and physical therapy, as well as the physicians assistants program. This changes Concordia’s primary presence from the main Ann Arbor campus on Geddes Road to its north building on Plymouth Road.

According to CUAA, they’ll graduate their first OT cohort this May with 12 students and 14 in 2026. The first PT cohort had 15 students, and another 15 are expected to be welcomed next year.

Under the accreditation for each, they can accept 28 new students each fall.

The master’s in physician assistant studies can accept 40 new students each fall. Laverick said the program has ongoing “wait lists.”

However, students and alumni are critical of the transition, which was prompted by the Board of Regents for Concordia Wisconsin voting to downsize the Ann Arbor campus last year. The Wisconsin university oversees the Ann Arbor one.

Some said they fear it’s just the latest step toward the Ann Arbor campus closing for good. Concordia has closed campuses in Alabama, Oregon and New York since 2018.

University officials said that’s a misnomer.

“We are downsizing and consolidating,” said CUAA Interim Executive Director Michael Duffy.

CU officials cited a $5 million to $6 million deficit in the 2024 push to cut back, Duffy said. And as smaller higher education institutions nationwide face similar existential threats — be it the Ann Arbor-Wisconsin merger in 2013 or closures and declining enrollments — he said scaling back the Ann Arbor college to a more manageable foundation was a bid to survive longer term.

What will students, alumni miss?

Watching your school or alma mater become a relic in real time has been difficult for members of the larger Concordia Ann Arbor community.

Rick Rolf, a 1980s CUAA alumnus, said the feeling was never more present than the 72nd Concordia Invitational Tournament, a January weekend of basketball between teams from four CU sites and one of the country’s longest-running college basketball tourneys.

It was the last game of the first night between CU Wisconsin and Ann Arbor’s men’s teams, he said, when a final buzzer-beating shot won CUAA the game. Video of the moment showed people in the stands rushing the court in mass excitement.

Now, Rolf said he wasn’t sure what would continue to engage alumni like him with Concordia Ann Arbor without athletics.

“The whole tournament was wonderful,” he said. “… The gym was packed. That will no longer be. (CU Wisconsin President) Erik Ankerberg canceled it (for CUAA)."

Duffy said they were sympathetic to the students and alumni who were taking the changes hard. For alumni and former student athletes, he said they’d keep a digital footprint they can revisit the past — if not a campus and future sports events.

“You see that bit of history taken away. We’re doing some things to hopefully retain that history.” Duffy said. “Athletics-wise, for example, everything will be stored. It will be an interactive website that people can still go back and say, ‘You know I played volleyball way back in 1997.’ You can go to this website, click on volleyball and you can see all the years.”

But the student and alumni community said it’s not the same.

Although CUAA partnered with two other colleges where current undergrads can transfer, student David Smalls said he knew some who were having a hard time finding somewhere to go.

A graduating senior himself, he studied justice and public policy, was the Student Government Association president, and also a member of Concordia’s bowling team, its Black Student Union and the National Society of Leadership and Success.

“I won’t be able to experience some of the things that alumni have been able to experience,” Smalls said. “I can’t experience coming back to campus and being involved in alumni activities or being able to give back to the campus in whatever capacity.”

Smalls said it felt like someone making decisions for a local campus they didn’t know from afar.

The fallout still deeply bothers Rolf.

“What are you a part of then? … They said they’re going to try to keep the north campus going, but will students even want to go to a school like that?” Rolf said. “It’s got a lot of instability to it. I think what they did was very dishonorable.”

What else is in store at Concordia Ann Arbor?

CU officials said they don’t have immediate plans to unload the main Ann Arbor campus, and that its dorms, possible classroom space and dining hall are still needed in the immediate future.

During a tour of the north building, however, Laverick said they still saw a lot of signs for hope — and even opportunities for future growth.

She and Duffy pointed to the variety of areas of the facility on Plymouth Road, its mock hospital bed settings with practice dummies, and mock apartments and hospital rooms for realistic medical care.

In one area of the building, Laverick said they also planned to bring over the usual student services, including for mental health, tutoring, study skills and academic advising.

Duffy said they wanted to make the north building a one-stop shop.

They don’t need facilities an 18-year-old college student may, Laverick added, nor space undergrad programs “where maybe we didn’t have the facilities, enough faculty or students to really do that well.”

 

But she said they hoped the hands-on, niche setting for graduate students and shared spaces for them to learn and study will help set the stage to bring some lost amenities back.

“Before, study away (like study abroad) was something all our students had access to, but maybe no one really took advantage of it,” Laverick said. “As we build the curriculum, we want to be really intentional about having living-learning communities on campus.”

Duffy said they were awaiting accreditation on other potential programs. There was even talk of erecting another structure at the north facility for academics and other ancillary needs.

 

“They’re also talking about possible apartments, possible town living,” Duffy said. “It’s just a slow growth. It’s basically taking what you have an expanding on it.”