Yesterday, Ohio governor Mike DeWine appointed a conservator and a governance authority to manage the dissolution of Eastern Gateway Community College. In a press release announcing the new EGCC appointments, Representative Tom Young, a Republican from Washington Township, said:
“As the Chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, it is unfortunate that Eastern Gateway Community College is closing their doors, but we must put the best interests of the students first.”
Except that no one has ever put the best interests of the students first in this drama. Nothing at EGCC has been about the students since the Board signed off on the Free College Benefit program. The school started accumulating accreditation problems and warnings almost immediately after it signed the Free College Benefit program deal.
No one cared about the impact that the institution’s uncontrolled growth would have on the students. As the FCB program grew, the EGCC administration just put more students in every class section. At some point, the HLC raised alarms about EGCC’s extraordinarily high student-to-teacher ratio and the lacking evaluation mechanisms for the army of part-time instructors EGCC hired.
That wasn’t about the best interests of the students; it was about making as much money as possible as quickly as possible using whatever means were available.
It appeared that the school was simply renting out its accreditation. When the US Department of Education objected to the abuse of the federal funds that drove the Free College Benefit program, the Board dug in deep and promoted the CFO to the institution’s presidency. That also wasn’t about the best interests of the students. That was the Board and its administration’s unwillingness to re-evaluate the long-term wisdom and inherent risks of acting like a for-profit institution.
What came before the best interests of EGCC students?
When EGCC’s second-level executives and faculty union issued votes of no confidence in the institution’s president and the Board of Trustees, the Board rolled along as though nothing was happening. Nobody asked questions about the school’s financial condition before committing its operating funds to repay the millions of dollars in bond debt the trustees signed off on. Again, that also was not about the students. That was about the administration thumbing its nose at the career faculty and staff dedicated to meeting the public’s expectations for legitimate higher education institutions.
Allowing Youngstown State University to pick the bones of EGCC as it attempted to weather the Department of Education’s back-breaking sanctions was less about helping EGCC’s students than it was about YSU helping itself to EGCC’s students. It was also about the State of Ohio’s plan to address a 12% enrollment decline at Ohio’s higher education institutions between 2012 and 2022. Collectively, the system shed nearly 65,000 students over a decade, so there was little incentive for the State to save a community college that chose not to follow the rules. EGCC offered an opportunity to correct a “capacity gap” in the higher education system, and the State of Ohio wasn’t going to pass that one up.
It wasn’t about the students when the Board voted to surrender the school’s accreditation and close the institution. Instead of repairing the damage that it did to the school, the Board voted to throw away the decades of investment by the residents of Jefferson County and the State of Ohio. But why should the Board attempt to reverse the school’s misfortunes when the State simply wasn’t on board with that plan?
The ultimate lesson for Ohio’s other public higher education institutions
So, nobody – except the EGCC students and its faculty – ever acted in the students’ best interests. It’s a little disingenuous to start claiming now that “we must put the best interests of the students first” when the people in positions of power to act in the EGCC students’ best interests utterly squandered every opportunity to do just that.
That should give little comfort to any student enrolled in any public higher education institution in Ohio. My message to them would be simply this: Look out for yourselves because no one else will put your best interests first.
Photo Credit: Matt Lodi , via Flickr
