ANOTHER sensible idea emanating from Raleigh …

This is getting kinda scary. 

Some in the GOP legislative majority are proposing merging several small community colleges in order to save the state some money.   Florence and Darlington Counties in South Carolina have done well — for AGES — with Florence-Darlington Technical College.  The communities of Northern Virginia have done well with a regional Northern Virginia Community College system.  If our neighbors to the north and south have survived with this method in play, why can’t we?

Jay Schalin, director of state policy at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, had a great opinion piece in the New & Observer defending this concept:

 … One proposal – to establish purchasing consortiums – would save a relatively small amount (initially $70,000 per year) by marshalling the community colleges’ collective bargaining power. Ralls readily accepted this proposal at the committee meeting. However, Mary Kirk, the president of Montgomery Community College and of the N.C. Association of Community College Presidents, objected to the proposal’s intent to centralize some purchasing functions.

The other idea – to reduce the number of community colleges by merging small colleges – is much more promising. It would save roughly $5.1 million on an annual basis, largely due to the elimination of administrative positions made redundant by the mergers. Larger schools are generally more efficient to administer than small schools; the average amount spent on administration per student at schools with fewer than 3,000 students is $983 but only $687 at larger campuses.

Of the 26 community colleges with low enrollments, 22 are within a 30-mile range of another school, making mergers geographically feasible According to the report’s principal researcher, Catherina Moga Bryant, merging those 22 schools with their most appropriate neighbors would include seven mergers between two small colleges, meaning there would be 15 mergers in all.

The mergers also could create another $3.5 million in downstream savings, by joining small business centers or child-care centers, or sharing equipment and instructional resources.

But the mergers do not mean campuses would shut down. Rather, when two schools merge, the administrative offices will be located at the larger campus, while the smaller campus will continue to offer courses as a multi-campus center…

Of course, the bureaucrats are fighting this idea.  It shrinks their turf:

Board members, presidents, trustees and administrators sounded a chorus against the idea put forward last month in an analysis by the legislature’s Program Evaluation Division. The report suggested reducing the number of small community colleges through 15 mergers involving 22 colleges to save an estimated $5.1 million a year.

That $5 million is the equivalent of one position at each of the 58 community colleges, or four-hundredths of 1 percent of the $1.3 billion state budget for the system, said Kennon Briggs, executive vice president and chief of staff.

That amount of savings is not worth transforming the system and eroding local support around North Carolina, said Scott Ralls, president of the system.

“Community colleges are much more than places where classes take place,” he said. “They’re the hubs of leadership; they’re the beacons of economic hope, and they’re the catalyst for things happening in many communities where they don’t see a lot of things positive happening. To take that out of our communities at this point in time for $5.1 million … doesn’t make a lot of sense.”