Report calls for major reforms to CT state colleges, causing discord
A newly released report from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has recommended major changes to the Connecticut State Universities and College system and how it’s managed.
The 194-page report was commissioned by the state’s Office of Policy and Management in January and its findings were released Thursday at the CSCU Board of Regents meeting, triggering a split response among stakeholders — with some CSCU leadership saying the report is a starting point in an ongoing conversation, while union members rejected most of the report’s findings and demanded for administrators to “listen to the faculty, not the consultants.”
In the report, NCHEMS cited issues with CSCU’s ability to respond to enrollment declines and produce successful strategic approaches to generate more revenue. It also raised flags about the “absence of an effective statewide higher education policy entity.”
Among a dozen suggestions at both an institutional and state governing level, the report called for a reorganization of CSCU’s administrative offices and the development of a staffing plan that would “stay within constraints of a balanced budget that is based on realistic enrollment levels.”
Recommendations
Brian Prescott, president of the Colorado-based data nonprofit that issued the report, said his organization was tasked with evaluating the CSCU structure, comparing the system to similar institutions and recommending solutions about the system’s scale and challenges in enrollment.
In his presentation Thursday, Prescott said CSCU’s enrollment decline is not unique and that it’s a common trend across the country in recent years since the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, institutional expenditures continue to rise, mainly from full-time staff which represents “between 70 and 80% of the total cost of higher education,” Prescott said.
“Although the number of FTEs have fallen over time throughout the system, the numbers have not fallen as fast as student enrollments have and so the ratio between employees and students has climbed for both instructional staff and non-instructional staff,” Prescott said. “The numbers of employees are out of alignment with declines in enrollment, but in addition, it’s difficult for CSCU to put the employees where they are most needed — at different campuses or in different settings or in different jobs to meet the needs of the system or the institutions.”
The report called for an adjustment of staffing levels, which may look like reassigning staff to different campuses based on need, layoffs or choosing not to renew employee contracts to ensure “staffing levels are appropriate to functions performed, services provided and the size of the system.”
“CSCU is understandably concerned about the effect such a step would inevitably have on morale, relationships with its unions and interactions with politicians representing districts across the state whose constituents may be affected,” the report stated. “Yet, as presented to NCHEMS, it does not seem to us that the choice is between ‘mass layoffs’ and little or no action at all. … All adjustments would take some time, but failure to initiate these adjustments serves to postpone the need to address a problem that is likely to get larger over time.”
The report particularly raised concerns with the state’s community college system, which consolidated last year into one institution with 12 locations — CT State Community College. The report said CT State “inherited a set of problems” from the hiring of several staffers through the use of one-time pandemic relief funding.
“CT State is chipping away at reducing this group of staff as they voluntarily move on, although the pace of progress is frustratingly slow,” the report said. “A staffing plan that realistically brings employment levels a.) into alignment with enrollment realities, b.) allows leadership to deal with the necessary geographic placement of personnel and c.) indicates the time period over which such adjustments can be expected would help put staffing decisions on a stronger, more justifiable foundation and will be an important next step in the launching of this new institution.”
For months, union members at the state’s four regional universities and the community college system have denounced any type of staffing cuts, arguing that current staff is overworked and under-resourced and they’re doing the most they can with what they consider to be the bare minimum.
“Faculty members of the state university system see this as an attack, an attack on students, attack on faculty members and an attack on our institutions,” said John O’Connor, a sociology professor at Central Connecticut State University. “There’s absolutely no discussion in this report about what takes place in a classroom and what really happens in these institutions.”
At the meeting Thursday, a group of union members walked out of the room when the report was introduced. One member yelled “listen to the faculty, not the consultants.”
“We object to the NCHEMS report that is being presented because it is recommending cutting the size of our universities — our whole system, which also includes the community colleges. They believe that because of enrollment declines we are too big and that we have too many faculty and staff and that we must be cut,” said Louise Williams, the president of the CSU-AAUP. “For us, that means a shrinking of opportunities for higher education, for the people of the state of Connecticut.”
The report also called for structural changes, including clarifying roles and responsibilities of administrators, which would work to reduce duplication of roles and improve communication from the top-down, conducting independent salary surveys and making adjustments and maximizing flexibility in personnel policies.
David Bednarz, a spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont, said the administration is reviewing the report and “listening to additional feedback from students, faculty, the business community, and other stakeholders including the higher education system leaders.
“Before any recommendations are implemented, stakeholders will have ample opportunity to ensure their voices are heard through both the legislative process and the Board of Regents,” Bednarz said.
State recommendations
Though Prescott said the state “has been unusually generous in funding its higher education institutions,” the report said more work could be done to offer better financial stability through state contributions.
The report recommended revisions to the higher education funding model to make it more systemic and transparent while also providing more consistent messaging about its willingness to fund its universities.
“The lack of a coherent finance policy continues to be a missed opportunity to ensure institutional efforts are aligned to state priorities,” the report said, adding that since the state legislature has provided additional funding in recent years to close budget gaps, it has “emboldened stakeholders.”
“CSCU’s efforts to appeal for more funding from the legislature in recent years has yielded additional resources that have helped CSCU close funding gaps at the same time CSCU has experienced unprecedented reserves growth and in spite of declining enrollment and questions about funding sustainability in light of unfavorable future demographic conditions,” the report said.
“This habit has emboldened stakeholders to believe that, in the end, the state will come up with additional funding. The legislature might consider appropriating funding provisions that ensure that any additional funds facilitate investments in system-wide institutional transformation, not for closing gaps that arise from institutions within the system that have not demonstrated disciplined budgeting practices.”
The report also recommended additional resources for higher education institutions — though not financially.
To ensure better stability, it recommended the establishment of a statewide coordinating agency that could develop a strategic plan for higher education in Connecticut, including statewide goals and priorities.
One proposal was to replace the Office of Higher Education with a new state agency that would not only administer financial aid programming and regulate private institutions, but also provide counsel to the state legislature and governor’s office about areas of need and how to address common challenges in higher education.
Regents’ response
A common consensus among the Board of Regents Thursday was that the report was a launching pad for possible directions to take the CSCU system.
“I think the report is very helpful in pointing out things that need to be done, but I also think there are parts here that are crucial that are really missing,” said Regent Ira Bloom, adding that it’s important to consider the demographics of students the CSCU system serves, a majority of whom are students of color and more likely to come from a low-income background compared to students who attend UConn.
“In Connecticut, there’s been a real focus on what is or what is not happening in K-12 and that produces, in the universities, a need for wraparound student services, which we did not have in the same emphasis 15 or 20 years ago,” Bloom added. “I think it’s an easy answer to say ‘Remove resources from one place to another’ in the short term. In university, it’s not always an easy thing to do. … This report is very helpful, in one sense, but it’s not complete.”
Colena Sesanker, a philosophy professor at CT State – Gateway in New Haven who serves on the board, also added that students come with various levels of preparation and that may contribute to changes in enrollment and how to better serve them in higher education.
“We have 169 towns and there are more boards of education than there are towns which means that the kinds of students that we serve are so diverse that there’s a diversity preparation. These kinds of analysis I think are missing from this report,” Sesanker said. “This is a budget report. It is commissioned from the perspective of OPM, but there is another perspective that needs to be addressed. … There’s a lot of pressure in the direction of getting smaller and smaller, but the reason our students struggle and the reason our enrollments fail may just be that we are not capable of serving them as we should.”
Among the responses from the Regents were also some criticisms about previous NCHEMS reports that triggered ethics investigations reporting from news outlets in Alabama and Las Vegas.
“Given these two startling reports on unethical behavior, I think there is no way we can accept this report as the basis for any decisions regarding how to run CSCU,” Regent Brendan Cunningham said.
Prescott said any allegations of wrongdoing in Connecticut were “absolutely outrageous,” and that he would “dispute the characterization.”
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