Can Malloy Leave Higher Ed Leadership Alone?

EDITORIAL

Maybe Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's critics are right. Maybe it's time for the hard-charging governor to back off and let the professionals run Connecticut's higher education system. At least for a while.

The issue was raised by the governor's recent ill-timed and ill-explained removal of Lewis J. Robinson as chairman of higher education's governing board.

Over the past two years, Mr. Malloy has reshaped and downsized the governance structure of the four-campus state university system, the 12 community colleges and an online university. (The University of Connecticut is not part of this constellation.)

Mr. Malloy's reform, one of his top priorities, saved some money and made sense. We supported it and still do.

But the governor broke a few pieces of china and embittered a chunk of the progress-averse higher education community in the process.

UNSTABLE

The dust was just beginning to settle with the appointment by the board of regents of Gregory W. Gray as the new president of the system. He followed the disastrous presidency of Malloy appointee Robert Kennedy, who was cashiered last October after a hard-to-believe unauthorized pay-raise scandal.

So unpalatable was that experience that the law was changed to make the system presidency a Board of Regents of Higher Education appointment while the governor will continue to appoint the regents board chairman.

Mr. Gray, from California, took command of this state's system of higher education — save for the UConn flagship — on July 1. Stability at last?

Well, no. At the beginning of August, Mr. Malloy sent his chief of staff, Mark Ojakian, to collect the resignation of Mr. Robinson as chairman of the board of regents. Mr. Robinson dutifully resigned, turning down the governor's invitation to stay on as a board member but not chairman.

It soon became apparent that Mr. Robinson didn't jump but was pushed. Why? All Mr. Ojakian will say was that there were "distractions" around Mr. Robinson's leadership of the board and that it was time for a change.

There may be good reasons for yet another change in the top stratum of a system that has undergone many changes in its two short years of existence. But the reasons haven't been adequately articulated.

This latest ouster comes, rather, as one more axle-breaking shock to the structure.

This high-profile move distracts — to borrow Mr. Ojakian's word — people from focusing on higher education's more daunting problems, such as declining enrollments and increasing costs, not to mention Mr. Gray's plans for change.

CRITICS EMERGE

It isn't clear whether the dumping of Mr. Robinson will help or hurt new President Gray with one of his immediate goals: restoring public confidence in leadership. An argument can be made that it will hurt.

It opens the door to charges of gubernatorial meddling by people who want Mr. Malloy's job.

And it's given critics who have never been at peace with Mr. Malloy's reorganization of higher education a new cause to fire and reload.

In a particularly tough letter to the governor this week, one such critic, former longtime community college trustee Jules Lang, a Norwalk attorney, accused Mr. Malloy of nearly destroying the community colleges. Mr. Lang told the governor to "remove your heavy hand and leave higher education to those who know what it is about."

Central Connecticut State University President Jack Miller wrote in July that he had "reported to six different chancellors/presidents, two boards and three chairmen" in the previous 28 months.

In The Courant op-ed, he implored, "Stop the musical chairs of leadership at the top of the system."