Faculty members at Central Connecticut as well as the other three state universities have raised their voices in protest against the Board of Regents for Higher Education and President Gregory Gray’s Transform CSCU 2020 initiative. The plan lays out approximately 30 “roadmaps” or goals which all Connecticut State Universities and Charter schools are to adopt as their own.
The central office of CSCU, which oversees a student body of over 90,000, has released these road maps for universities and colleges to review. Among them is the goal of integration and an increase of online-based classes and a registration portal for general education classes across universities.
Professors from several Connecticut universities have protested the road maps, specifically the ones which would push schools to substitute online teaching for classroom settings. Gray recently wrote that “education pundits” suggest the teacher is no longer as relevant to learning as in past times, but rather students are now learning more from each other.
Perhaps instead of relying solely on what supposed experts have to say, Gray and CSCU as a whole should be more willing to listen to the teachers who have dedicated their lives to their profession and are familiar with the way in which students learn. Are these teachers not pundits as well?
What Gray seems to be ignoring is that an important aspect of higher education is the human interaction. While it is possible for some classes to be taught online, many require the face-to-face interactions between students and professors. It is for this reason that we have physical universities instead of just watching videos online to obtain an education.
If all state universities and community colleges are required to interconnect through these road maps, these institutions will no longer be allowed to stand independent of each other. The universities should work together, but should not give up their strengths in the process. Each of these institutions have individual needs, wants and goals, something that Gray seems to be ignoring.
Special meetings have been organized at Eastern and Western Connecticut State Universities to protest the Board of Regents and Transform 2020 as discontent is expressed by faculty of both the universities and colleges in Connecticut.
Last Saturday the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges met and passed a resolution which states that the Transform CSCU 2020 plan “lacks focus on academic excellence, consolidates our distinct missions, is so vague as to be meaningless and removes autonomy from local institutions in a manner that has enormous and negative consequences for the educational experiences of our students.”
While serving as Chancellor of Riverside Community College District in California, Gray announced that $45 million had been cut in the district budget over the course of three years, while at least 650 classes were eliminated in a single year. In May of 2013, Gray was elected president of the CSCU system.
During an open forum last year, professors expressed concerns that department consolidations would occur, similar to what Gray did in the SUNY system. By consolidating the whole Gray will weaken the individual: both the institutions and those who attend them.