National reports say state is near top in higher ed funding

Realkook....I don't quite get the analogy, but, then again, I don't usually understand much of your babble. What point are you trying to get across? Are any of your accusations "fact-based"....or...do you just get satisfaction out of typing?

I am not trying to be mean....but, you make my head hurt.

Slow down...take your medication...and try again...

Scapegoat: If you feel happy, assume that I need medication -- my medication is to bust fakes, crooks, and charlatans, and expose all those that use and criminally waste public money (as if it is their personal estate -- a la Carter), and make their head spin. When you put your own dollar on the line and run your own business, you will understand how you can be frugal and yet reach your goals. Every day hundreds and thousands of small business people, agriculture farmers etc. succeed in this regard. "Innovation" becomes a second nature to them. Success comes from ideas and not by pouring somebody's money into a bottomless pit. What is meant by "fact-based"? Whose facts and from whose point of view?

Don it is funny- growing up in blue collar west haven the only people with college degrees were teachers- and the only people that took work home were teachers. A machinist could not take work home- although these WWII trained machinists had practical math skills that would put today's students to shame- called "shop math". Until Vietnam there were very few male teachers(Chris Matthews mentioned this a while back)so teaching was a job to more or less normalize the public to jobs at factories, SNET etc. In fact according to Wikipedia "A normal school was a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose was to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. Most such schools are now called teachers' colleges; however, in some places, the term normal school is still used". A math teacher may know math well enough to teach high school math, they could never design computer chips or streamline propeller motors. Many teacher now consider themselves the equal of dentists or lawyers in that they have "advanced degrees"-but want the protection of unions and the perk of summers off and pensions. I dont know why but this is the recent history.

Malloy's proposal to create a combined Board of Regents should help with the bloat. A terrible misstep to leave UConn out of the mix, but CCCS and CSUS are a place to start.

At the CCCs there are far too many programs with far too few students and faculty are getting paid (in the form of release time) to coordinate all of these pet-project programs, which means an adjunct has to be hired to teach a class. Then there is the 9 hours per week that faculty are supposed to spend doing some project other than teaching a class. Here's an idea for a reporter - FOI all of the annual proposals (each faculty submits one) and annual reports (stating what the faculty accomplished for the 9 hours/week) from all of the CCCs. Let's see what we're getting for our money.

The massive numbers of programs, degrees, and certificates (most of which land a full time faculty with release time) are not even compliant with the CCCS Board of Trustees requirements. Who has been minding the store? It's time to ask the system office why they have allowed this massive fat to accumulate and it's time to start cutting, streamlining, and tightening.

What does the system office do? There is nothing cohesive about the 12 CCs. The CCCS will tout common course numbering as something systemic. However, there is NOTHING common about the pre-requisites to the classes (so let's face it, they're not common). A student can be in need of deep remediation in math and English and still take a 200 level history class at one school, but not at another school. It's obvious that when half of the class is reading, writing, and calculating at the 5th grade level the content (in this example, history) cannot be covered with the same breadth and depth as it can when all students have successfully completed college-level composition. They are not common courses. No wonder the CSUS balk at taking CCC classes uniformly.

Why is it SO HARD for CCC students to transfer to a CSU? Partly because the CSUs, like the CCCs, have nothing in common. They do NOT operate like a system - which begs the question, why have administrators been paid huge salaries to run a SYSTEM? All of the CSUS have different core requirements with varying degrees of flexibility. Why can't there be a common general education core? I do not accept the argument that this will change the individuality of the campuses. They each have a different constellation of majors, which distinguishes each of them. CCSU has the technology, ECSU has the liberal arts focus, WCSU has the fine arts (music) focus. SCSU - who knows - it's the Titanic.

Public higher education is FAT with hunger. The money is being wasted on pet-projects, turf-wars, and ruling fiefdoms. Consequently, there are terrible graduation rates, lost credits in transfer, and disenfranchised students. I hope that the new Board will demand efficiency, accountability, and lean operations that SERVE STUDENTS.