In March 2014, it was announced that Dodge City Community College might become part of Fort Hays State University under a proposal that would create the first public four-year degree-granting college in southwest Kansas. The college would then be known as Fort Hays State University at Dodge City if the plan is approved by the Kansas Board of Regents. Fort Hays faculty might teach other four-year programs in Dodge City, while courses typically taken by college freshmen and sophomores would remain the same. The proposal would also require $10 million to build a technical institute and $5 million per year in state funding. If the Board of Regents approve it, then it must also be approved by the state Legislature and the governor.
On November 11, 2014, the community college's Board of Trustees voted 3-3 on a proposal that recommended that Fort Hays become an upper division college and technical institute in Dodge City, with the Dodge City college remaining independent. With this vote, the merger has collapsed and will not happen.
The main campus sits on 200 acres (0.81 km2) of the 4,160 acres (16.8 km2) owned by the state and deeded to the university. The campus property includes more than 40 limestone-faced buildings. Big Creek, a winding stream that traverses the campus, not only enhances the beauty of the campus, but also serves as a natural laboratory for students in the biological sciences. The campus is located just to the west of the Hays business district, two miles (3 km) south of Interstate 70. Several businesses in downtown Hays cater specifically to FHSU students.
In addition to supporting the general needs of faculty, staff and students, Forsyth Library has a large collection of fiction and nonfiction material about Kansas and the American West, supported in part by the Elmer and Eartha Pugh Trust Fund. Topics include railroads, the cattle industry, cowboys, Native Americans and frontier life.
The William D. Pashchal World War II History Collection, donated by retired dentist William Paschal, contains books, declassified government documents, maps, photographs, and other materials. The university's Sternberg Museum of Natural History features interactive natural science exhibitions, many traveling and temporary exhibitions, an acclaimed Discovery Room, and a Museum Store. The museum houses over 100,000 square feet (10,000 m2) of dinosaurs, fossils, prehistoric animals, giant sea-swimming lizards and fish that inhabited Kansas over 70-80 million years ago. The Sternberg Museum also includes more than 3.7 million specimens in collections of paleontology, geology, history, archaeology, ethnology, botany, entomology, ichthyology, herpetology, ornithology and mammalogy. One will find that all these major exhibits contain at least one creature/plant named after Sternberg.
The university's museum was renamed the Sternberg Memorial Museum after the death in 1969 of George Sternberg, who had developed it. The current museum was formed in 1991 when the university's museum was merged with the Museum of the High Plains.
The museum is the home of the famous Cretaceous fossil Gillicus in Xiphactinus, better known as the "fish within a fish," which shows a small fossil fish inside the stomach of a larger fossil fish.
In 2010, researchers at the museum showed that plankton-eating fish flourished in the ocean at the same time as the dinosaurs, filling in a 106-million-year gap in the fossil record. One of the authors of the paper was Mike Everhart, a curator of paleontology at the museum. FHSU comprises four colleges (Arts and Sciences, Business and Entrepreneurship, Education and Technology, and Health and Life Sciences) which together have 30 departments and offer more than 60 academic majors for undergraduates and 19 for graduate students. Students at FHSU can obtain Associate's degrees in office technology and radiologic technology; do their preprofessional study at FHSU then transfer to a medical or law school; obtain bachelor's and master's degrees; and in some areas of the curriculum, can earn specialist's degrees.
FHSU also offers online degrees through its "Virtual College". The "Virtual College" evolved from the Department of Continuing Education and Learning Technology in 1999. It is responsible for offering a variety of online courses and degrees to students that are not able to be on campus. The "Virtual College" currently offers 19 bachelor's degrees and 10 master's degrees online. It also offers endorsements and certificates online. It is fully accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. FHSU's online programs in counseling, human resources, IT and computer science, and nursing are ranked in the top 5 in each category for most affordable programs of their kind in the United States. The "Virtual College" has strategic partnerships with the military, community colleges across the country, and universities world wide. Recently, over 5,800 students from over 27 countries, and ranging in age from 18 to over 70 were enrolled in the "Virtual College."