The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Pandemic won’t delay community college merger
The COVID-19 pandemic won’t delay the Connecticut state college system’s plans to merge its 12 community colleges by the 202324 school year, officials say.
In a report to its regional higher education accreditation agency, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities outlined its recent progress toward a consolidated Connecticut State Community College, or CT State.
The updates to the plan, called Students First, were accepted in a letter from New England Commission of Higher Education this week. The accreditors also tasked CSCU with next steps to remain on track for the merger.
“In short, we are in a very strong position to receive accreditation as a single college in a timely manner,” David Levinson, interim president of Connecticut State Community College, wrote in an email to community college employees.
The plan, first proposed four years ago, has been a source of controversy since its conception, particularly among unionized professors. More than 1,400 faculty, staff and former administrators signed a petition against consolidating the community colleges in 2019.
“Many of us don’t understand how in particular (for) a community college — which has community in its name for a reason — how does this benefit students to move all the decision-making, including curriculum and admission policies, out of the realm of the community itself and put it somewhere far away?” said Lois Aimé, presidential aide for the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges, the community college educators union also known as “The 4Cs.”
Aimé submitted a public comment earlier this week to the New England Commission of Higher Education.
Proponents of the plan to streamline operations and share administrative costs say its goals are twofold: to support students and become fiscally sustainable.
“Four of our current community colleges have negative reserves, or, in other words, without the ability to combine resources as a system, they would face insolvency,” wrote Levinson and Jane Gates, former interim president of CSCU, in the report. “The savings achieved through the merger put the new college in a far better fiscal position.”
CSCU officials have estimated consolidation would save the system $23 million per year by fall 2023.
The initial Students First proposal, reviewed by accreditors in 2018, was deemed “unrealistic” and sent back to the state college system for edits.
The more recent report addressed nine questions raised by the accreditation agency last summer. They included updates on enrollment projections, strategic plan development, and the implementation of “guided pathways” — structured academic plans for students with additional supports.
It also lays out steps taken in other areas of the merger during the last year.
The CT State team has made “significant progress,” according to the report, to align curriculum across the 12 campuses. The process is slated to wrap by December 2021, with the exception of math and English that have until May 2022.
Officials say standardization will help students by letting them transfer or take courses on different campuses without running into obstacles. But critics pushed back against that claim, saying it could have the opposite effect.
“They’re reducing the curriculum to the lowest common denominator for the 12 colleges,” said Aimé, the union presidential aide.
Planning has also begun to situate a new CT State leadership team and staff at 185 Main St. in New Britain.
The shared services include finance, human services, information technology and enrollment management and student affairs.
“While there have been some growing pains in implementing shared services, there have been very few issues brought forward using the established complaint resolution processes,” read the report.
In its response, the New England Commission of Higher Education tasked CSCU with next steps including further strategic planning, defining its organizational structure, and involving faculty in curriculum development and other areas.
It also asked that the system provide evidence that its enrollment and projection goals are realistic, and its guided pathways program promotes student success.
Despite substantial enrollment drops during the pandemic, CSCU projected total enrollment to grow 26 percent over the next three years.
The accreditors also asked for more clarity on the savings CSCU anticipates from sharing services and eliminating duplicate positions, and how those will compare to the cost of the merger.
The state college system plans to submit its “substantive change” proposal to the accreditation agency next year.