Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out why, after 171 years, Manhattan College is getting a new name. We’ll also look at why Amtrak’s system keeps breaking down.
Change is coming to Manhattan College, which is in the Bronx.
The school is not moving to Manhattan, which it left 101 years ago.
But the school is changing its name — to Manhattan University.
Its officials will unveil the new name this morning, pulling off a blue tarpaulin that has covered a sign with the new name.
“There’s more prestige associated with a university than a college,” Milo Riverso, the president, said. “A university has a certain stature and status.”
Manhattan hopes that a more prestigious-sounding name will help against headwinds that have buffeted other small-to-medium size schools, particularly when it comes to shifting enrollment trends. With parents and students in this country questioning the value of a college degree, “we feel we made ourselves more marketable” to international students, Riverso said.
Foreign students make up about 5 percent of Manhattan’s current enrollment. The school wants to boost that to between 15 percent and 20 percent, but internationally, Riverso said, schools with “college” in their names are seen as “glorified high schools or community colleges. ‘University’ denotes a four-year degree.”
Manhattan, a Lasallian Catholic institution, is joining an already sizable parade of colleges that have renamed themselves. A 2022 study in the journal Economics of Education Review said that 122 four-year colleges morphed into universities between 2001 and 2016.
“There’s a gravitas factor that comes with being a university rather than a college,” said Jason Simon, the chief executive of SimpsonScarborough, an educational marketing firm.
He also said that becoming a university often signaled a growth strategy, and Manhattan is looking to expand, or at least to return to its former size. The school’s undergraduate population has slipped to about 2,800, Riverso said, about 500 fewer than he wants on campus. Manhattan had its largest enrollments from 2017 to 2020, he said.
“Post-Covid, it’s been difficult,” Riverso said. “During Covid, we had to shut down visits, and it hurt us.”
In New York, colleges began transforming themselves into universities after the New York State Board of Regents, which sets education policy, loosened the requirements for an institution to be known as a university. Until 2022, to be eligible for such status, a school in New York had to offer degrees in at least two professional fields and doctoral programs in at least three. The rules were revised to recognize 10 “discipline areas.”
Brian Hynes, the executive creative director of Austin Williams, an advertising and branding agency, said that the change “was done to align with how, in other parts of the world, ‘college’ brings you to what our version of high school is.” To U.S. students, “‘college’ and ‘university’ mean higher education,” he said, “but ‘university’ has more weight.”
“But there’s a double-edged sword there,” he said. In focus groups, “people had the perception that universities were more expensive and harder to get into. So immediately, when you change from ‘college’ to ‘university,’ you are subliminally creating a different set of expectations” among prospective students — and their parents.
Riverso, who graduated from Manhattan in 1981 and was appointed its president last year, said that the school conducted a survey about a name change in 2022. “There was a lot of deliberation,” he said, but of some 3,000 students, faculty, administrators and alumni who responded, more than 75 percent approved of “university.”
One concern was what Riverso called “linkage breakage” among students applying for jobs. Hynes said that “the idea of the school not having the same name as the school you attended” had come up when other colleges turned themselves into universities — and that alumni were divided by age.
Those under 40 were “extremely excited, and after they say, ‘That’s awesome,’ they say, ‘Can I get a new diploma?’” he said. “And you have people above 40 who say it’s not the same anymore.”
Weather
Expect a mostly sunny day with temperatures in the mid-70s. It will remain mostly clear overnight as cooler, drier air works its way into the region. Temperatures will drop to the high 50s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sept. 2 (Labor Day).
The latest Metro news
Mississippi Freedom Trail extended to New Jersey: A convention hall in Atlantic City, where the voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer addressed the 1964 Democratic National Convention, was designated as the first out-of-state stop on the trail, which commemorates the civil rights movement.
New York at the Democratic National Convention: Gov. Kathy Hochul and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke on Monday. Both endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and criticized former President Donald Trump.
Charges against police official dismissed: Commissioner Edward Caban dismissed disciplinary charges against Jeffrey Maddrey, the second-highest-ranking officer in the Police Department. Maddrey was facing the loss of 10 vacation days for interfering with the arrest of a retired officer who had chased three boys while armed.
Columbia student protesters allowed to return to campus: Most of the students who were arrested or faced discipline for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations this spring will be able to return to the campus this fall. Many are still awaiting disciplinary hearings.
Migrant encampment cleared: New York City officials began to clear out an encampment on Randall’s Island, where dozens of migrants had begun sleeping outdoors.
Tree trouble: Trees reduce the effects of extreme heat around New York City by shading sidewalks and sucking up planet-warming carbon. But a chemical reaction involving emissions from cars and buildings can negate those environmental benefits.
Amtrak struggles through the summer
Amtrak passengers have coped with exasperating delays this summer. One particularly bad afternoon in June in particular showed that many of Amtrak’s vulnerabilities along the Northeast Corridor have to do with the system’s astonishing age: Long stretches have not been modernized since they were electrified a century ago.
“It’s staggering, it’s just staggering that we’re still having antique technology controlling our rails,” said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board whose duties included overseeing railroad investigations from 1995 to 2004.
Michael Bezilla, a historian for Pennsylvania State University who wrote a book on the electrification of trains on the Northeast Corridor, said, “The question is, why hasn’t Amtrak upgraded and why isn’t it using modern technology?”
My colleagues Patrick McGeehan and James Glanz write that on June 20 Amtrak lost power to about 10 miles of tracks after a circuit breaker exploded in New Jersey, just west of the railroad tunnels under the Hudson River. All the trains between Philadelphia and New Haven, Conn., came to a halt on one of the hottest days of the year.
Amtrak inherited the infrastructure along the Northeast Corridor when the federally chartered railroad was created in the 1970s.
Amtrak, which maintains equipment that dates to when the old Pennsylvania Railroad owned the line and electrified it in the 1920s and 1930s, has had to cannibalize old substations for parts or to have them custom-made. The replacement parts for the substation that blew up in June are not expected to arrive until later this month.
Thousands of Amtrak passengers were stranded, along with commuters who depend on New Jersey Transit — which shares tracks through part of the Northeast Corridor and platforms at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan with Amtrak. The two railroads have coexisted uneasily for years. After pledging to work more cooperatively, officials began an investigation of the recent failures. Amtrak released a progress report on the investigation on Tuesday.
But Amtrak officials have said there are no immediate plans to update the electrical system.
METROPOLITAN diary
Midtown
Dear Diary:
“Ya wanna see Midtown?”
Dad said to me,
A teenager visiting for lunch
At a new advertising agency on Mad Ave.,
The poster of Andy Warhol
Nailed right onto a wall
In a reception area,
Lifelike, and
I thought he was telling it like it is,
While we walked
To Scoops,
Blocks away in the 1960s,
Just for that “essential standard”
Vodka martini lunch,
My father called it
And I got one sip while he rambled
About the Apple,
And how he would always be
A downtown boy,
Doing jackknife dives
At some indoor pool,
And how his immigrant parents
Put him through N.Y.U.
Just so he could become
One of the admen
Who ended up in Jersey,
Forever missing Manhattan.
— Kathryn Anne Sweeney-James
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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