In today’s Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee, a significant portion of their time was spent hearing about and discussing a study done by the NCGA’s evaluation team on North Carolina’s Community College system.

The evaluation team had four findings.

  1. North Carolina’s 58 community colleges were purposefully established to meet community needs, but their independence challenges administrative efficiency.
  2. Small colleges have higher administrative costs per student FTE (full-time equivalent) than larger ones.
  3. Community colleges are not taking advantage of purchasing consortiums.
  4. Merging colleges could reduce costs system wide and increase administrative efficiency.

From their four findings, the evaluation team had two recommendations.

  1. Reduce the number of small colleges through mergers
  2. Establish a purchasing unit to develop purchasing consortiums for community colleges.

The first recommendation, merging smaller community colleges, would create a recurring savings for the state of about $5.1 million with a potential for additional recurring savings of $3.5 million.  The team also found that from the second recommendation, establishing a purchasing unit, the state would save at least $270,000 annually.  In all, over the next seven years, if these recommendations are adopted, the state of North Carolina has the potential to save $26.2 million.

After the presentation by the evaluation team; Scott Ralls, President of the North Carolina Community College System; Mary Kirk, President of North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents; and Donnie Hunter, Chairman of the North Carolina Association for Community College Trustees, were all allowed to speak.  All three spoke against the recommendation to merge smaller community colleges into multi-campus community colleges.  Mary Kirk argued that this plan would “devastate rural communities”.  All were in agreement that consortiums could help save money and should be considered.  However, Kirk went further and cautioned the committee from comparing the community college system to the UNC system because some consortiums could harm the local cooperation that these community colleges produce.

Kirk also stated that North Carolina’s Community Colleges are already efficient, a statement that both she and the Pope Center for Higher Education agree on, and do not need this merger to improve.Senator Hartsell, a co-chair of the committee, ended the meeting with his own recommendations.  He believes that the committee should proceed with the consortium recommendation and further review the merger proposal but not rule it out in any sense.

The committee will meet again during the redistricting session to come to a final decision on the recommendations of the evaluation team.