A scandal much bigger than higher education

Gov. Malloy says consolidating the state university system and community college administrations will save “tens of millions of dollars over time.” How much time? It might take tens of millions of years.Certainly the higher education bureaucracy could use pruning. The chancellor of the state university system, whose retirement Malloy seems to have hastened, is being paid nearly $400,000 per year, and university presidents are earning nearly $300,000. Actually, Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven has two presidents earning nearly $300,000 each this year, the old one being kept on the payroll for an extra year as part of a dismissal settlement, the new one being a crony of the retiring chancellor. The immediate past chancellor draws a state pension of $110,000 per year as he goes around the state lecturing the skeptical against cutting state spending, which he likens to “eating our seed corn,” which he made a career of doing and still does in luxurious retirement.And yes, the system is full of people who call each other “Doctor,” append more abbreviations to their names than can be found in a bowl of alphabet soup, talk in impenetrable jargon and do jobs whose necessity can’t be perceived by anyone outside the system. u u uBut as much as there is money to be saved here, it’s not really big money on the scale of the state budget, and it’s not the big scandal of education in Connecticut. The big scandal is really lower education.Last year a state government study found that nearly two-thirds of degree-seeking students in the state university system and nearly 70 percent of such students in the community college system require remedial math or English or both. That is, Connecticut’s higher education system is serving mostly students who never should have been permitted to graduate from high school. What used to be taught in 12 years now requires 16. Thus the bloat isn’t just its administration but the whole system itself — consumed by educational inflation. Valuable as the system is to the third of its students who applied themselves enough in high school to deserve a shot at college, Connecticut might be better served — better educated and more prosperous — if most of its higher education system was simply liquidated and standards were restored in high school. The objective should be to take the joke out of the line used by the late, great Hartford radio broadcaster who often noticed the surplus of pretension in higher education and so would introduce himself on the air as “Bob Steele, H.S.G.” — “high school graduate.”Then tens of millions of dollars might be saved in the first year and every year for tens of millions of years, and the only expense would be bruised egos.u u uWhile unnerving higher educators, the governor has reassured lower ones, in that his budget will fund state financial aid to municipal school systems at the same level as last year. This will be portrayed as a noble service to children but it is a service only to the municipal teacher unions. The governor would exempt them from the sort of concessions he is seeking from state government’s unionized workforce. If state aid to municipal school systems isn’t reduced, municipal school boards won’t be forced to get tough with their unions, even though Connecticut’s economy is so weak that teacher compensation probably could be reduced by 20 percent or more without a significant loss of staff.Mere taxpayers may hope that Malloy’s exemption of the municipal teacher unions is simply strategic, that he means to start economizing with the state workforce without having to fight the municipal workforce as well and wants only one labor battle at a time. Indeed, even one might be a miracle. Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.