The University of the District of Columbia has made a takeover offer for D.C.’s Southeastern University, The Examiner has learned.
UDC’s new president, Allen Sessoms, and its board chair, Jim Dyke, met with Southeastern’s board chair, J.R. Clark, about a month ago and offered to absorb Southeastern, a source with intimate knowledge of the talks told The Examiner.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Sessoms has said publicly that he wants to create a community college program in the District. Southeastern offers a two-year associate’s degree but is losing money; the school announced last year that it was interested in a merger.
“We are in the process of seeking and reviewing merger options,” Southeastern President Charlene Drew Jarvis told The Examiner.
Southeastern was founded in the 1870s by the Young Men’s Christian Association. It became a federally chartered school during the Great Depression. It has struggled to keep up enrollment and meet its budget for years.
Jarvis, a former D.C. councilwoman who was unseated by future Mayor Adrian Fenty, has helmed the university since 1996.
It’s unclear whether she would have a role in a post-merger university: According to the university’s most recent tax returns, she is paid more than $192,000 in annual salary and another $36,000 in benefits.
UDC was created in the late 1970s to give an affordable education to poor and working-class residents. Nearly two dozen presidents have come and gone since it opened.
Sessoms, who taught at Harvard, has promised to re-engineer UDC and to make vocational training one of his top priorities.
Reformers have argued for a community college in the District for years.
Southeastern’s board of directors will meet Wednesday to discuss UDC’s offer, the source told The Examiner.
