DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 11:45 a.m. October 10, 2008
14 state technical colleges to merge; 7 presidents’ jobs to be cut
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, October 09, 2008
The state’s deepening fiscal crisis has prompted Georgia technical college officials to merge 14 of the system’s 33 schools.
The 14 colleges will be merged into seven. The move, which include the pairing of Chattahoochee Tech in Marietta and North Metro Tech in Acworth, will save about $3.5 million in top administrators’ salaries, fringe benefits and other expenses, officials said.
Calvin Cruce/AJC
Chattahoochee Tech in Marietta is merging with North Metro Tech in Acworth. Here, Chattahoochee Tech students look at a music video they created. The college’s TV production program has won several awards.
Once the mergers take place, the Chattahoochee and North Metro campuses will have almost 14,000 students, by far the largest in the state, system officials said. The boards governing the affected schools will pick new names for the colleges before July 1, when the unions will be complete.
State officials say the mergers won’t eliminate programs or reduce the quality of education provided at any of the schools.
But some small-town officials and lawmakers aren’t convinced.
They fear their colleges will wind up being little more than subsidiaries to schools in bigger cities. That could cost their towns prestige, status and, eventually, educational programs, they say.
“I know they have to make cuts, but we want to make sure we don’t lose our identity,” said state Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga). “The Northwest Georgia (legislative) delegation will fight to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Mullis represents North Georgia’s Northwestern Tech, which would merge with Coosa Valley Tech in Rome.
Metro Atlanta is loaded with educational opportunities, from public and private universities to technical college campuses in most counties. In rural Georgia, technical colleges are a major source of training, economic development potential and small-town pride.
Small counties with technical colleges use them to try to lure businesses because Georgia’s technical school system has traditionally been quick to tailor training to meet the needs of companies. Such re-training is particularly important in towns that have been hurt in recent years by the loss of textile and manufacturing jobs.
So folks in some towns worry about the changes the technical college system wants to make.
Hays Arnold, the mayor of Thomaston, is among them. Thomaston is home of Flint River Technical College, which would be merged with Griffin Technical College.
He worries that programs might be cut, despite assurances from the state. ” Our little community has lost some one out of five manufacturing jobs (in recent years),” he said.
“We are being told programs might be expanded, but sometimes you become very skeptical about what government tells you might be done,” he said.
Sen. George Hooks (D-Americus), who represents Thomaston, shares Arnold’s concern.
“They should not hinder the economic development of these communities that need their help in these difficult economic times,” Hooks said. “Technical education in difficult times needs to be in the forefront of creating new jobs.
“Bigger is not better.”
State officials say none of what has made the technical colleges successful will be lost when the 14 school are merged.
The most immediate changes will be in the number of president and vice president salaries the state has to pay. Each merger combination will save the state about $500,000 in salaries and expenses.
“The campuses themselves will stay the same,” said Michael Light, spokesman for the Technical College System of Georgia. “If I was a student attending that college, I wouldn’t know anything different was going on until they changed the sign.”
Light said students at the colleges will probably see an expansion of programs because they will have access to the offerings of both of the merged schools.
Robert Hitchcox of Ringgold, who sits on the board of Northwestern Technical College in Rock Spring, supports the change.
“If we can streamline our education system, we need to do it,” Hitchcox said. “I don’t think we’re going to diminish the cause of education. We aren’t going to lose our identity at Northwestern Technical College, nor at Coosa Valley. They are the cornerstones of our community and they are going to remain that.”
That’s the message Technical College System Commissioner Ron Jackson is trying to convey in meetings across the state with the boards of colleges being merged.
He’s got a supporter in Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, the Senate’s president.
“That (merger) is a way in which you gain efficiencies without cutting services to students,” Cagle said.
But Jackson hasn’t yet convinced every lawmaker it’s a good idea, and the General Assembly must approve the technical college system’s budget.
Hooks, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said, “Until it’s proven to me that without exception that they will increase the mission of technical education in those counties, I will not think this is a good idea.”
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