The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Merger plan best course for community colleges
There is no sugarcoating it. Connecticut’s community colleges face two systemic challenges that spill beyond the walls of higher education and affect the state — and its economy — at large.
First, we are not meeting our goal or those of the state when it comes to student success and equity. Second, our colleges face persistent structural budget deficits made worse by the pandemic-driven drop in enrollment. Rather than being complacent and allowing these challenges to threaten our ability to continue operating all of our campuses and programs, the Board of Regents for Higher Education — the governing body that oversees the state’s 12 community colleges, four state universities, and Charter Oak State College — is taking a proactive approach, moving to merge the community colleges into a single accredited institution with a reorganized structure focused on providing students, regardless of which campus they attend, with a strong academic experience and the supports they need to succeed.
While I acknowledge that changing the way we operate can be difficult, I fully support the merger as the best way to improve student outcomes and achieve fiscal stability to our colleges.
It would be difficult to overstate just how dire the situation has become. From a student success and equity perspective, Connecticut ranks lowest in New England, and near the bottom of all states. Our three-year graduation rate for white students is 21 percent. By contrast, the graduation rate for Black students is 8 percent — more than 60 percent lower than that of white students. Even when we factor in the students who transfer to a different institution before graduation, the combined “success rate” stands at only 40 percent for white students and 29 percent for Black students.
Indeed, across all of the key performance indicators CSCU analyzes, Connecticut’s equity gap remains high and persistent. This harms people and communities, and is one of the ways that Connecticut systemically harms poor and minoritized students and their families. If Connecticut had closed the equity gap, nearly 3,000 more students of color would have received degrees or certificates between 2013 and 2018, and COVID-19 will only exacerbate these inequities.
Despite the heroic efforts of faculty and staff on our campuses and a series of initiatives at individual colleges, we need a comprehensive approach. That is why a central component of the merger is the adoption of nationally recognized best practices that have led to dramatic improvements in the institutions and systems in which they have been implemented. This includes a streamlined approach to advising that ensures all students get the information and support they need to succeed and complete in a timely manner. Remember that many community college students are the first in their family to attend college and may face extraordinary obstacles to success in higher education. It is not enough to have open admissions: community colleges must actively help all students succeed.
At the same time, we cannot overstate the urgency of improving the community colleges’ fiscal situation. In the fall 2020 semester, enrollment at the community colleges declined by 15 percent over the same time a year earlier because of the pandemic, making an already worrisome long-term downward trend even worse. Without achieving substantial operational savings, we will not be able to absorb the losses at all our campuses for long before closures and program eliminations become unavoidable.
This is an option neither the Board of Regents nor I are willing to entertain. Our community colleges are not only the economic and community hub for the cities and towns they serve; they are often the only option for many of the most vulnerable students in those communities. They provide economic opportunities to many who would otherwise fall behind and workforce development support to businesses that need talent to compete in the labor market.
We cannot expect the state to increase their investment in our system or students to pay increasingly higher tuition and fees without getting our house in order. Our plan calls for reasonable administrative reductions in costs and a reorganization of academic and student affairs to improve student enrollment, retention and completion. No full-time faculty or student support positions are slated for reduction, and, in fact, we will be reinvesting wherever possible in additional full-time faculty and staff in areas that have been woefully underfunded in the past. Operating 12 campuses on limited resources just does not make sense when we can pool our funding and our valuable workforce in better ways. So many of Connecticut’s businesses, communities and families have had to do that same.
The merger is on track to save $23 million per year by the time Connecticut State Community College — the name of the merged institution — is up and running in the fall of 2023, putting the college on far firmer fiscal footing and allowing all our current college campuses to remain open.
In fact, we have already achieved some of these savings by not filling vacant positions that do not fit into the new structure, reorganizing other position responsibilities, and moving some staff from campuses to new merged positions in the one college. Some savings will be used in the near future to hire much-needed advisers to ensure students have clear pathways to degree completion.
Now, there has of course been some opposition, led by a group of individuals, many of whom work in the separate state university system and are therefore not directly affected by the merger.
A recent opinion piece in a different newspaper even falsely claimed that the merger would cost more than the status quo — despite independent verification of the veracity and achievability of our savings projections from the highly respected and nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis. Despite this noise, the Governor’s Workforce Council has recognized that low success rates at our community colleges harm the state’s workforce and overall economic health, and as such, Gov. Ned Lamont has come out in support of the merger. Likewise, the NAACP Statewide Convention, recognizing that poor equity outcomes do significant long-term damage to communities of color, endorsed the Board of Regents’ plan last year. There is also support from many faculty and staff.
It is not a panacea, but the merger of the community colleges will improve student outcomes and save significant money. Working with the Board of Regents, I am doing everything in my power to move it forward. I am optimistic and have great hope that with shared goals to improve student equity, success and completion the community colleges will make measurable improvements in student success and strengthen the state’s economic fabric, all while being good stewards of the taxpayer’s investment in our system.
The merger is on track to save $23 million per year by the time Connecticut State Community College is up and running in 2023.