The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Panel has questions about plan for merger
Accrediting commission wants more details about planned consolidation
As the controversial plan to merge the state’s 12 community college inches forward, the accrediting body overseeing the process has laid out a new todo list.
The guidance comes in a sixpage response to the state’s latest 90page progress report. In its response, the New England Commission on Higher Education asks for more details on how the plan will live up to its name — Students First.
The Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system is asked to detail how the plan will keep the institution that emerges fiscally and academically sound and how existing campuses will continue to meet commission accreditation standards until a merger still four years away.
Mark Ojakian, president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, called the letter a “road map” toward ultimate accreditation as one college.
“We are encouraged,” Ojakian said in a written statement. “Rest assured that CSCU — in an open and collaborative process driven by faculty, staff, and students — is already developing concrete plans to address the areas where NECHE requested more information.”
David Levinson, a former Norwalk Community College president now a
“presidential fellow” in the system office, said based on the NECHE letter, the plan is further along that it was a year ago, when the accrediting body called it unrealistic.
Ojakian and the Board of Regents for Higher Education pushed forward, and this latest NECHE response did not outline specific ‘areas of concern.’
“I do believe we are moving closer,” Levinson said. “This response was really helpful.”
But that’s not how Lois Aime, director of educational technology at Norwalk Community College, reads it. “It is clear that our accrediting body is expressing serious concerns with nearly everything the system has been doing over the past year,” Aime said. “NECHE appears to be putting the system on notice that it cannot sacrifice the educational needs of the current generation of students to build the bureaucratic structure of the proposed future single college.”
Her reading of the accrediting body’s requests show they do not view the plan has having students at the forefront, she said.
“NECHE’s concerns echo those that have been voiced over and over by the faculty, staff and students of the CSCU system.” Aime added. “No amount of spin can gloss over NECHE’s strongly worded concerns.”
In its response, NECHE requests additional information and raises questions about what the three newly hired regional presidents are going to do between now and the projected 2023 merger.
In April, the Board of Regents created the three new $220,000 salaried positions. Ojakian called them “change agents” and a critical step to implementing the plan.
Each is to oversee a group of the existing community colleges, even as the campuses continue to have ontheground presidents. Thomas Cole was selected as president of Region Three, which consists of Gateway, Housatonic and Norwalk community colleges.
“Given these new appointments and the growing authority of the system office, we are interested in how the system can ensure that the separately accredited institutions have sufficient independence from one” another to meet commission standards for accreditation, NECHE Chairman David Quigley wrote in his letter to the state.
Given the state’s continued fiscal struggles and declining enrollment, the commission asked for details on how the combined institution that is proposed would manage not to reduce studentfacing staff on the campus level when there is an increase of central administration staff.
The Students First plan was proposed in 2017, not long after Ojakian became president of the system as a way to deal with diminished state resources while keeping intact all 12 campuses which are scattered throughout the state, serving nearly 48,000 students.
NECHE officials ask the state to return with an update in April 2020.