During a budget crunch It’s easy to blame administrative bloat and the regional office for a college system’s ills, but can we afford independent college infrastructures or do we need a system or regional infrastructure to provide economies of scale? How important is local decision-making and in particular academic control? How do we maximize teaching resources when current funding is simply not sufficient to meet both student demand and overall organizational operating needs?
Connecticut State Colleges and Universities
Posted inEducation
Unexplained exit of CSCU provost prompts ban on non-disparagement agreements
State senators have approved a bill forbidding state officials from demanding that employees sign non-disparagement agreements when leaving their state jobs — a move directed at the state’s largest public college system.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Right fervor, wrong focus. More than Meriden campus at stake
The potential closing of Middlesex Community College’s Meriden Center is terrible news. Nevertheless, there is one very good thing that has come from the decision to close the campus: attention. Ultimately, the conversation that needs to happen is not about the Meriden Center; rather, it is about the necessity — and obligation — to properly manage and adequately fund Connecticut’s state colleges and universities.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Time to dismantle the CT Board of Regents
However well-meaning CSCU President Gregory Gray’ appears, it doesn’t change the most important dynamic that impacts funding for higher education in the state: legislators don’t trust the Board of Regents for Higher Education that Gray heads and are leery of giving more money to a central office that can’t seem to do anything other than increase administrative costs, grow an already bloated management core, raise tuition rates, and continually demonstrate the debilitating results of bureaucratic paralysis.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Online courses poor substitute for faculty at Connecticut state universities
More online instruction is a poor replacement for college classes staffed by caring faculty members. If that’s what it has in mind, Connecticut’s Board of Regents for Higher Education should rethink its plan for transforming the Connecticut State College and University system.
Posted inEducation
Lawmakers concerned over CSCU administrative costs
Top state legislators are concerned about how much officials of the state’s largest public college system are spending on administrative costs. (Photo: CSCU President Gregory Gray answers legislators’ questions.)
