The sudden replacement of a popular community college president with a legislative bureaucrat last month has some asking whether Colorado’s community college system operates more like a business than an institute of higher learning.
A group of state lawmakers outraged by college system president Nancy McCallin’s appointment of the state Medicaid director as head of Front Range Community College is questioning her about the direction of the system and the centralizing of decisions that previously had been left to individual colleges.
“This is what we might be calling managed higher education, where bureaucrats are put in charge of making decisions instead of professors and students,” said state Rep. Angie Paccione, D-Fort Collins. “It dilutes the strength of the academy.”
Rep. Judith Solano, D-Brighton, has called for an investigation into president Janet Gullickson’s resignation.
McCallin, who was Gov. Bill Owens’ budget director, was put in charge of the 13 colleges last fall. She was under a legislative mandate to cut 20 percent from the system’s operating budget and streamline some operations.
“It’s a public business with an academic mission,” McCallin said. “You can’t be doing things 13 different ways.”
McCallin said she was hired “to be a change agent.”
“So yeah, I’m going to be looking at people who I knew could get the job done.”
Experts in higher education finance say it makes sense to run certain aspects of colleges from a business perspective, as long as it doesn’t harm the quality of education.
But in some ways, Colorado’s community college system is going backward by concentrating more power at the system level, said David W. Breneman, education dean at the University of Virginia.
System offices made sense when states were building new campuses and before college presidents took on more fundraising, he said.
“The big national trend in higher ed is toward more entrepreneurship and responding to local markets,” he said.
Gullickson was hired after a year-long national search by the college’s advisory board. When she resigned after only a year, McCallin quickly replaced her with Karen Reinertson, who has no academic background.
There was no search or input from the advisory board.
“Accountability doesn’t mean cutting all the other interested parties out of the process,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Critics say the quick, nonpublic process flies in the face of what community colleges represent: community.
“Higher education is not a place where you can just interchange parts like a bureaucracy,” Paccione said.
Soon after McCallin was put in charge of the system, the state board that governs the colleges gave her authority to appoint permanent presidents.
“It’s a little hard to be accountable when somebody else appears to be hiring you instead of the president of the system,” McCallin said.
There is grumbling among professors, students and administrators about consolidating operations such as applications for financial aid and enrollment. Some complain the standardized policies are not allowing each college to decide how to meet student need.
Lawmakers jumped in when Gullickson resigned.
Gullickson signed a settlement agreement with the state and received a $30,000 payout. The agreement binds Gullickson and McCallin to secrecy about why she quit.
Solano said the silence is frustrating.
“What kind of shenanigans are going on there?” she said. “This is state taxpayers’ money. I think that we all have a right to know.”
Gullickson’s supporters say she butted heads with McCallin about changes in the system.
State Sen. Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, called Reinertson’s appointment “political nepotism at its worst.”
Reinertson is the fourth person McCallin has appointed from the executive branch.
McCallin hired Kristin Corash, former special assistant to Owens on homeland security, as director of strategic planning for the colleges. Marilyn Golden, former director for the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, is vice president for administration and finance at the college system. And Jennifer Sobanet, who worked in Gov. Roy Romer’s budgeting office, is director of budgets.
“These people could easily go into the private sector and make a lot more money than we’re paying them,” McCallin said.
McCallin said she replaced Gullickson quickly because she didn’t want to leave the college without a president during a lengthy and costly search, and she sought out Reinertson because “she’s one of the most brilliant managers I’ve ever met.”
“In another month from now, they’re going to be very happy and very pleased with who they have,” she said.
Reinertson, who started Aug. 15, said she is highly qualified to make business decisions and she’ll look to academics for input on areas where she isn’t an expert.
“I see my role as the leader for the college,” she said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
