Thinking regionally: Community Colleges

The latest move of the Growth Machine is a proposal that DC create a community college separate from the University of the District of Columbia. (See "New Talk of D.C. Community College" and "Why Washington Needs a Community College" from the Post and "D.C. needs community college, new Brookings Institution report claims" and "Allen Sessoms: 'Get it right or close it'" from the Washington Business Journal.)

My response has been rather than create a "new" college from scratch (UDC is the creation in part of the merger of a community college into other institutions), work with Montgomery College and/or Prince George's County Community College, and create a regional institution.

Do we really need to create a separate and expensive college administrative structure--unless that is part of the make-work jobs program too? Why not have a combined system, leverage the strengths of the jurisdictions, and slim down the size and cost of having separate administrative structures? Not to mention that DC hasn't demonstrated a good track record for creating best practice institutions from the ground up.

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Also note that as a budget saving move, The State of Georgia is merging the adminstrative structures of a number of state technical colleges, of the 33 schools, 14 will be merged into 7. See "14 state technical colleges to merge; 7 presidents to lose jobs" from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In times of financial exigency, it's a bit easier to break through and make tough and right decisions.