SUNY Merger Plans Draw Critiques From Elsewhere

While there has been no lack of local commentary about the decision to have SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Canton share a president, the issue has also sparked conversation from afar.

In recent weeks, several higher-education professionals have weighed in on the advisability of such a decision, leaving comments on related blog posts on the Inside Higher Ed publication website. In the Community College System of New Hampshire, Vice Chancellor Charles W. Annal said he has seen such a move transpire and backfire firsthand.

"It proved to be not very workable for a number of reasons. It was very difficult on the presidents to keep traveling between the two campuses, and their availability was something of an issue," Mr. Annal said. "The campuses didn't like it because they didn't have a president on the campus that they could work with. A lot of the presidential duties ended up falling to the vice presidents of academic affairs on both campuses."

According to Mr. Annal, the seven-college New Hampshire system attempted to share four presidents about a decade ago to save money. However, the colleges moved back to having individual presidents approximately seven years ago, partly because each community perceived the president's attention as being directed towards the other community.

"It was a noble experiment that failed," Mr. Annal said. "It's something I don't think any of us would want to do again."

Ellen E. Chaffee, president of both Valley City (N.D.) State University and Mayville (N.D.) State University from 1993 to 2002, expressed similar reservations in a comment on an Aug. 19 Inside Higher Ed blog post.

"It's possible, but it's challenging. If it's just a way to save money, just saving one president's salary, it's not worth it," she said in a phone interview Wednesday. "That's a small amount of money to pay for leadership capital and every opportunity that other campuses have."

Ms. Chaffee said that there were potential benefits to be had from sharing presidents, but she warned against the possibility of losing "leadership capital" and important fundraising opportunities. She also said that SUNY Central had contacted her recently to seek her input about combining administrative services.

In Ms. Chaffee's opinion, the situation was not comparable to becoming president of one campus with doubled enrollment. She said that the dual presidency, which oversaw schools 75 miles apart with a fierce athletic rivalry, was more challenging than she had anticipated.

"Outsiders seem to think that this approach is a no-brainer. It is not," she wrote in response to the Aug. 19 blog post. "Those who are responsible for deciding to go this way owe the impacted institutions and leaders their thoughtful and on-going support - and a periodic formal review to once again weigh the costs and benefits."

Closer to home, higher-education professionals are also posting their opinions online. In addition to several comments from anonymous SUNY faculty members, Steven G. Horwitz, Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University, has weighed in.

"Having lived and worked for over 20 years in proximity to two of the schools now combining presidents, I think the odds of success are VERY low, at least in this case," he wrote in response to a blog post Sunday. "Putting the Potsdam president in charge of both campuses is a recipe for disaster given both the success of the Canton president and the vast differences between the schools."

Mr. Horwitz said that he understood SUNY's desire to save on administrative costs but that the major disparities in the schools' development and curricula could lead to problems. He recommended cutting mid-level positions as a more feasible way of reducing administrative bloat.

"The president's job is mostly to fundraise. It might be the case that working on one gets you distracted from the other," he said Wednesday. "I just worry that one or the other, or to some degree both, will get lost in the shuffle of two schools with one president. There's potential for trouble."