Community college consolidation raises questions

It boggles the mind that the consolidation of our 12 Connecticut Community Colleges into a single entity called “Connecticut State Community College” will cause it to become among the largest such institutions in the nation with about 80,000 students. With this act, the nature and concept of community has certainly been sucked out of our community colleges, and brand new layers of highlypaid, taxpayer-bleeding bureaucracy have been added including an overlord president earning $288,354, a series of regional presidents, and a cadre of CEOs.

The Hearst Connecticut Media story on this says “A major selling point of the plan is that all 12 campuses would be kept.” Well, if none of this were imposed upon our state, all 12 campuses would still be kept, and there would be no cause for “controversy in the minds of many faculty who worry about losing the identity and local community support the 12 colleges enjoy.”

On a final note, when I taught at Norwalk Community College, the school was essentially on a four-day week. Is this still the practice among our community colleges, and will it continue with our new 80,000-student community college system that will now have that thick new layer of bureaucratic icing on top? Maybe switching to a five-day week could make the new system more productive, but of course union shackles would likely make that far, far more expensive if they would permit it at all.

Grant Monsarrat Easton