Kennesaw State Students Start School At A Larger University

That’s because Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta has officially merged with Kennesaw State.  

Kennesaw State University’s provost and vice president of academic affairs, Ken Harmon, said the merger will save more than $4 million per year. 

“We’re going to be plowing back a good bit of those savings toward students and those colleges on what we now call the Marietta campus,” Harmon said.   

Administrative and staff positions have been cut, but the number of students has jumped to about 33,000. About 7,000 Southern Polytechnic State University students are now Kennesaw State University students.

When the merger was first announced two years ago, KSU President Dan Papp told WABE that the merger was for both academic and economic reasons. 

“With Southern Polytechnic having as its primary focus — engineering, engineering technology and architecture — the programs there complement the programs that we offer here at Kennesaw absolutely perfectly and vice versa,” Papp said. 

This is the fifth and largest consolidation of universities in the state, according to the University System of Georgia. The Board of Regents approved the merger in January.