🔒Desperate times call for vast gov’t restructuring

True government restructuring is never easy to propose, let alone implement and accomplish, even during times of crisis.

Dealing with impassioned interest groups, particularly those backed by powerful unions, often leads to intense political fights that can scare away reform-minded leaders from making necessary changes.

That's why we are applauding Mark Ojakian, president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) system, for his efforts to tackle the financial constraints of our state's higher-education system.

Last week Ojakian proposed a bold, sweeping consolidation plan for the state's CSCU system that would save $41 million annually by centralizing leadership and administrative services of the state's 12 community colleges.

The plan would consolidate administrative functions like IT, human resources, and purchasing and contracts, while also unifying community colleges into a centrally managed organization, leaving open all 12 main community college campuses, at least for now.

Ojakian says the changes are necessary as the college system, which also includes the four regional state universities and the online Charter Oak college, continues to lose student population and state financial support, both of which make up the majority of its funding sources. Since 2015, state appropriations for the $1.2 billion CSCU system have fallen 12.4 percent, and there is a projected $35 million deficit for fiscal 2018.

Meantime, the student population is also shrinking as our high schools graduate fewer pupils.

Hiring freezes and cost cutting have been used as temporary stop-gap measures in recent years, but won't be able to keep pace with the system's structural deficits.

Ojakian's proposal has already been approved by the Board of Regents for Higher Education and doesn't require legislative approval. We expect many objections to be raised, as any threats to layoff administrators will be met with intense opposition.

At least one critic — liberal advocate Jonathan Pelto, who's been a Malloy administration nemesis — wrote in a blog post that Ojakian's plan “would undermine Connecticut's community college system and remove important independent functions of Connecticut's state universities.” He also lamented that a centralized system would impede locally driven education programs that have been crucial to developing students employers need.

We too would like to see more details of the plan before we give it a rubber stamp of approval. It is true that our community colleges each have their own unique missions, many of which have been shaped in conjunction with the private sector.

In recent years, for example, many of our of community colleges have adopted advanced manufacturing programs to help fill a worker shortage hindering one of our state's most important industries.

We need to ensure that a centralized administrative system is able to quickly and efficiently respond to the needs of students and the business community.

In his rollout, Ojakian described the consolidation plan as “Students First,” because cuts are expected to spare student services and teaching faculty. That's good news, but again the devil will be in the details.

Of course, another issue Ojakian himself pointed out is that the college system has few expense areas to trim given that 80 percent of total spending is dedicated to personnel costs and 95 percent of full-time staff is represented by bargaining units.

The power of unions to impede necessary change in state government, particularly cost cutting and restructuring of the state's vast bureaucracy, has always been a problem. We respect workers' rights, but Connecticut's fiscal crisis requires drastic measures to right our ship.

Ojakian is taking the necessary steps in higher education. We'd like to see similar ambitious restructuring in other parts of state government as well.