HPU will add football, but new arena for basketball and pharmacy school will come first as part of $2.1 billion expansion

High Point University president Nido Qubein says, football is “Inevitable”, but he is asking community leaders to find the school land to build on.

Major announcements today in High Point courtesy of www.myfox8.com:

HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) – High Point University announced on Wednesday the school will be adding a pharmacy school, building a new state-of-the-art arena and will invest $2.1 billion in the university over the next 10 years.

High Point University President Nido Qubein announced the school will add a School of Health Sciences. The program will include Physician Assistant, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy and College of Pharmacy programs.

Since 2005, the school has invested $300 million in the university. Qubein said the school plans to invest an additional $2.1 billion over the next 10 years, including a state-of-the-art athletic arena that will seat 5,500 people. Construction on the arena is not expected to start before 2013.

Qubein also announced the school will add a men’s lacrosse program. He added football is “Inevitable”, but he is asking community leaders to find the school land to build on.

Qubein said the school also wants to make 5th Street a part of campus, if the city council approves the request. Construction could begin as early as next April. He also said the school will build a new $30 million library sometime in the next 5-6 years. Qubein said the current library is “too small.”

Qubein said the school will not borrow any money to make the expansions. The school currently has 3,300 undergraduates but expects to have over 5,000 undergraduates by 2017.

The announcements were made at a Community Leaders Luncheon on Wednesday. The school’s board of trustees and city leaders attended the luncheon.

16 thoughts on “HPU will add football, but new arena for basketball and pharmacy school will come first as part of $2.1 billion expansion

  1. Qubein is amazing. Not only for what is doing for HPU but he is changing High Point. Some struggling Fortune 100 company needs to hire that guy.

  2. Qubein is the Triad’s version of Cuban…Mark Cuban down in the “Big D” of Dallas…..And now we have the “Big Q” at HPU……Or the “Q Man”, if you so desire……

  3. The Southeast Guilford Varsity Volleyball Team attended the HPU/Campbell volleyball match over there last night. Not having seen the campus in a while I was truly impressed. Glad to see football is coming there, maybe they can get a softball program as well. Most of the Big South schools have softball. They seem to be doing all the right things and doing them well.

  4. well i use to like hpu. but they have forgot where they came from. it was a college with history but in time have truly forgot who put that college on the map. and its not qubein.

  5. Who did put High Point University on the map????? I remember back in the day when they were High Point College and I always thought that Qubein put them on the modern-day map….Never heard much out of High Point until Qubein came on board and got the place shaking….

    This one has us wondering if we are missing a page out of our local history lessons/books……

    Curiosity has the cat in a corner……

  6. I have no idea of who might have led HPU to glory other than Eugene Littles. He was a very talented basketball player and he is the only name that I remember from High Point unless you include Orlando T. Smith.

    I do know that J.D. Hayworth was a frequent visitor to our campus as a young lad growing up in High Point but he made his name out in Arizona.

    Nido Qubein has been the sole driving force that has put our institution on the national radar screen. He has made us famous.

  7. I think everyone is forgetting who put HPU on the map before Qubein, a man by the name of Jerry Steele put them on the map for years.

  8. Go HPU and Quebin! He truly has made HPU an extraordinary place that Greensboro/Jamestown/HP and NC should be very proud of! What a leader and visionary! If you haven’t been on HPU’s campus, stop by…you will be WOW’d!

  9. This is fantastic! As a 2004 HPU proud graduate in addition working HPU Basketball home games during school and after graduation I was able to witness the school HPU has become. Dr. Quebein is considered a “Rock Star” on campus.

  10. It’s way past time for UNCG to add football. Especially being in the SOCON. “If HPU then so can you”.

  11. Guys, Jerry Steele was a fine basketball coach but basketball coaches don’t build buildings, acquire land or enhance national academic reputations. Basketball coaches don’t raise 300 million and then another 2.1 billion without borrowing money. Basketball coaches don’t build pharmacy and physician assistant and therapy departments. Qubein also has kids from all over the country wanting to come to High Point. Think about that for a minute. People wanting to come to High Point. You can’t say that very often.

  12. With all this talk about High Point College don’t froget that Greensboro still has the Phillips Business College and the American Business College downtown and that ought to mean something.

  13. is that right mr.hpu history buff. you said it hpu buff. i dont know anything about hpu . i know hpc. the president suppose to do the things he is doing. the coaches as well as the students put hpu on the map the last time i checked. bob davidson, jerry steele jim speight , hall of famers . athletes like gene littles, otis foster, george byers, wayne jones(hpc head coach) anthony morrison, brian payne (6 time all-american in track as well as 2 time national champion), kenny drummond and the list goes on . if the school was bad no one would come, but its the student- athletes that make the school . none of hpu teams could beat any of the teams hpc had. and the teams that hpc had could win the big south in basketball, baseball, soccer and track. if you look up the history mr. hpu history buff most records that are still there are held by hpc athletes. with some in that record book of theirs is wrong or omitted. thats great that mr. qubein is doing all of these great things but never forget where you come from. rome wasnt built in a day either.

  14. There are already way too many PA and pharmacy schools, HPU is behind the curve on this and by the time the students foolish enough to enroll in such (likely expensive) programs graduate there will be virtually NO jobs for them. What many do not realize is that the triad area is not a large metropolis such as Atlanta, etc; as a recruiting professional that knows this area I can tell you that there are presently not enough openings here to employ even one average class size group of graduates. Please warn those that you know to NOT go to this ponzi scheme of a health professonal school that has no major academic medical center affiliations, if you actually read this post, please pay heed to what has been said.

  15. DJ, tell me why you think there are TOO many PA and pharmacy schools. UNC-G wanted one; but the economy is such they can’t afford one. Elon just announced theirs. Nido Qubein is first and foremost a businessman, if there wasn’t a need, he wouldn’t invest in it. As for jobs, why should out-of-state students (HPU’s target market) want to stay in NC, where salaries are historically some of the lowest in the country.

    Since the school is still on paper, it would be hard to say who is employed there or their qualifications; but they must be licensed before they accept students. I would believe that they would work very closely with High Point Regional Hospital. But all this is at least 2 years away.

  16. Don, just take a look at the number of colleges of pharmacy that have opened in the past 7 years. We went from 88 schools of pharmacy in 2002 to well over 120 today with appoximately ten per year trying to open every year for the foreseeable future. Go ahead and check out the grads projections from the aacp website, we will be seeing pharm grads go from 8,000 kids per year to 15,000 in a mere decade. You cannot think that doubling the number of grads in such a period will not lead to a surplus; I personally know 13 pharmacists in the triad that haven’t found a job in 1 year plus. Think it’s the economy? You’d be dead wrong, retail pharmacy is where 75% of the pharm jobs are and there are some inherent problems there as cvs/walgreens have nearly stopped expansion and the #4 and #9 employers of pharmacists rite aide and kmart are both near bankruptcy, buddy that’s 8,000 pharmacies that will shutter, and approx 19,000 jobs lost; the rx files will be absorbed by cvs and Wag, who are able to fill 3x the volume of these stores without having to add pharmacists; so with a mere 5800 pharms retiring each year, how will we have jobs for all these new grads? Wake up and use the Internet bro, it will show you all the fly by night programs that have opened up and the projections of the job market shrinkage; look at the “pharmacy manpower project” it shows you that your out of state argument is rubbish as well, and shows you that the whole country is at it’s saturation point in this profession. Finally if you doubt the massive piles of data that I have lead you to, why don’t you interview a few UNC-CH grads/students or visit the pharmacy section of the “student doctor network” where you will find multitudes of students without a single job offer lined up. Point is you haven’t reasearched this and neither has Nido, he just goes with whatever brings in more tuition bucks for his institution regardless of what it gets his students, last time I checked you could get an ivy league education for the price HPU is charging and not be destitute due to the fact that a BA from this school will only get the majority of it’s grads a mere 50k entry level job at best. Sorry for the iPhone induced typos on this response but that should give you a good starting point to research further on your own, PA s are nearing the same situation as well, I just don’t care to type out another novel, but I hope you and whoever reads this will at least consider looking into the facts.

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