As states ponder what to do with struggling public universities, their attention turns to Georgia: The Peach State has merged 14 of its colleges into seven new institutions since 2011, and more consolidations are underway. With Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Oregon, and other states pondering mergers as a solution to sinking enrollments and tight budgets, college leaders across the country have been contacting their counterparts in Georgia for advice.
Perhaps the most surprising — and possibly unwelcome — lesson is that mergers may not actually save much money. And it turns out that combining two large and complex organizations is sometimes a knotty task, one that must focus as much on bringing together different campus cultures as on the functions that underpin them.
But college leaders in Georgia have learned a lot during six years of campus consolidations, and those lessons may help future transitions work more smoothly.
Each state faces different challenges, and Georgia’s mergers have been shaped by its particular circumstances. Unlike many states, Georgia is projected to produce more high-school graduates in years to come, with the annual average climbing from about 104,000 in 2017 to about 112,000 in 2025, according to a report by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, an increase of nearly 8 percent. Georgia doesn’t allow collective bargaining for state employees, giving change-seeking administrators more leverage. After plunging by 24 percent in the years after the recession, state appropriations to the system have risen back to 2009 levels only in the 2018 fiscal year.
I don’t think it’s the holy grail that some people think it might be in terms of savings.
The Georgia mergers were not meant to slash expenses. Henry (Hank) M. Huckaby, chancellor of the University System of Georgia, said in 2011 that consolidations were meant to “enhance our ability to serve the people of Georgia at less cost,” but the system didn’t set specific targets for savings. All money derived from efficiencies at combined institutions has been kept on the campuses and redirected into academic programs and student-success measures.
The money saved in Georgia barely counts as a drop in the fiscal ocean. According to Shelley C. Nickel, executive vice chancellor for strategy and fiscal affairs, the system has redirected about $24 million from consolidations so far, which is less than 1 percent of the system’s $8.8-billion operating budget for the 2018 fiscal year alone. The new Georgia State University, which was created in 2015 by consolidating the old Georgia State with Georgia Perimeter College, now enrolls more than 50,000 students, making it the largest institution in the system. It saved $6.58 million through consolidation, about half of 1 percent of the university’s operating budget of about $1 billion for the 2018 fiscal year.
Most of the savings derive from eliminating redundant administrative positions — consolidated institutions need only one president and provost, merged colleges need only one dean, etc. The consolidated Georgia State, for example, reduced its number of total cabinet officers from 20 to 11. But two campuses under one name still need all or most of their professors, mid- and lower-level administrators, and service-staff members. Georgia State lost only 28 employees, some to retirement, out of about 8,300 over all. At the same time, it hired 30 more advisers and nearly 50 other student-support personnel.
In fact, in some cases mergers may generate new expenses. When Georgia State, a research university, and Georgia Perimeter, a community college, consolidated, more than 200 employees received raises to bring them into parity with higher-paid peers, according Don Hale, vice president for public relations and marketing communications.
The system has spent more than $3 million helping the consolidated institutions with their accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, according to Sonja Roberts, communication specialist for the Board of Regents at the University System of Georgia.
“There are costs that come along with a merger that are maybe not foreseen with great clarity,” says W. Ken Harmon, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Kennesaw State, which merged with Southern Polytechnic State University in 2015. “I don’t think it’s the holy grail that some people think it might be in terms of savings.”
‘It Was Bumpy’
Consolidations don’t just bring together two physical campuses and two sets of curricula. They bring together two different groups of people with different missions and different cultures. Reconciling those differences presents a daunting prospect for those guiding the process, and for the thousands of employees affected by it. “You are impacting people’s lives,” says Ms. Nickel. “You’re disrupting the way they do their work.”
Disruption can sometimes make strange bedfellows. When the system merged Georgia State University with Georgia Perimeter College, it brought Georgia State’s biggest feeder institution in-house and created an easier path to four-year degrees for the community college’s students. It also combined two institutions with different ways of working.
At the old Georgia State, if all the available sections of a high-demand course filled up, the university would create new sections as needed, according to Mark P. Becker, the president. When he assumed leadership of the consolidated institution, also called Georgia State, he discovered that when courses filled up at Georgia Perimeter, overflow students were put into online courses, “in spite of the fact that the drop-out and failure rates for those online courses were rather high.” The consolidated Georgia State now creates new sections across the institution.
Combining two colleges also raises concerns about how the identity of each institution is preserved — or isn’t. “Names and histories and identities mean a lot to people,” says Mr. Becker.
In the case of the system’s first merger, of Augusta State and Georgia Health Sciences Universities, a new name came to dominate the public discussion. A plan to name the new institution Georgia Regents University in 2012 was met with anger from stakeholders because the name of both institutions would be lost. The Georgia Board of Regents in 2015 voted to rename it Augusta University.
New institutions can only have one name, and one set of sports programs. Georgia Southern University is in the process of consolidating with Armstrong State University, and the new institution will be represented on basketball courts and baseball diamonds by athletes from teams at Georgia Southern, which competes in the NCAA’s Division I. While many details are still being discussed, including the new Georgia Southern mascot and colors, teams from Armstrong State, which competes in Division II, will be dissolved. Armstrong State athletes have had their scholarships converted to university grants and can try out for positions on Georgia Southern teams, though many are already transferring to other colleges. “We tried to put the student athletes and their well-being first in making this decision,” says Jaimie L. Hebert, president of Georgia Southern, “but at the end of the day we had to have a single athletic program.”
Blending academic programs across institutions can present even thornier challenges. Southern Polytechnic brought many new programs to its merger with Kennesaw State, but there were also duplicate departments, like mathematics. University leadership decided to combine the faculties of shared programs, which was easier said than done. Departments within the same discipline often had different curricula, standards, and workplace expectations, according to Mr. Harmon, the provost. “There was some real wrestling going on, and camps forming,” he says. “It was bumpy at times.”
Mr. Harmon says he tried to make sure that faculty members from each university had equal representation on committees that determined how the new combined institution would operate, including universitywide issues like guidelines for promotion and tenure. “Sometimes those groups just could not come to a compromise,” he says. “We had a few groups that came to an impasse and just stopped meeting.” Mr. Harmon had to intervene a few times.
Making Decisions
Some of the difficulties with the earliest consolidations in Georgia have helped the system’s leaders finesse subsequent mergers. One of the biggest lessons learned involved soliciting less input for some matters. The ill-fated “Georgia Regents University” name was chosen by the Board of Regents after soliciting input from a committee of various stakeholders, a relatively open process that helped fuel the subsequent public debate over what the new university should be named. “That caused so much consternation in the local communities, and on the campus, that for the next iteration, the board named the new institution right up front,” says Ms. Nickel, the system’s executive vice chancellor for strategy and fiscal affairs. By deciding such straightforward but potentially emotional issues ahead of time, the regents avoid having them distract from more complicated challenges.
Some issues require more discussion, maybe far more than planned.
The faculty committees charged with designing Kennesaw State’s new guidelines for promotion and tenure had trouble agreeing on certain stipulations. Mr. Harmon says the planned adoption of the guidelines was bumped for a year, and then another, in order to allow for more discussion.
But it’s important to empower committee leadership to make decisions when the time comes, he adds. The faculty committees at Kennesaw State had equal representation from both universities, and many were run by co-chairs, one from each institution. That scrupulous balance contributed to the impasses, according to Mr. Harmon. “Once you’re merged, somebody’s going to be able to make a decision, so you might as well let that be the case during the process,” he says. “Let people have a voice, but have some real decision makers down at the committee level.”
The system’s leaders hope that once the bumps are behind them, and the decisions all made, the benefits for students will outweigh all the trouble. Full-time, first-time freshmen retention rates have risen at all of the consolidated institutions but one (South Georgia State College, which was created by combining the two-year colleges South Georgia and Waycross Colleges), according to Ms. Roberts, the spokeswoman. There’s no data yet that show graduation rates have improved. “It’s going to take years to really see results,” Ms. Nickel says. “The progression is going in the right direction.”
Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.