Former Gov. Angus King would tell this story about the University of Maine: He was certain from early in his term that part of the reason for the university’s budget struggles was the light teaching loads professors carried there, requiring many more of them on the faculty. But after trying several times to get a simple reply to the question of how many classes, on average, professors taught each semester, he concluded that the university was even more determined that he not learn this secret. He left office after eight years still not knowing. Once, when he was reminded that this was a hard number for anyone to obtain, he said, “Yes, but I’m the governor!”

So he was, but he was a governor whose suspicions about the University of Maine made its administrators (and there are many administrators) nervous to the point of dissembling, and university-system officials learned to go around his office to the Legislature whenever they could. The former governor may have had the right hunch – the university system hid substantial tax-supported inefficiencies – but he wasn’t the guy to get at them.

Maine’s current governor, John Baldacci, UMaine alumnus, expert politician and friend of public education, has an entirely different approach, which gives him a chance to do thoroughly what is now being done partly: reorganize not just the university system but higher education in Maine in a way that few governors could. If he can be persuaded to take up this challenge, prepare for interesting times.

The late Howard Bowen, an economist and college president, observed 20 or so years ago that because a college’s bottom line is not profit but, in one form or another, educational excellence, prestige and influence, it has built-in, near-limitless incentives to spend. He called this a “revenue theory of cost.” But revenue is not unlimited, forcing universities to choose among worthy programs, or, more positively, forcing them to chase out waste and duplication to keep as many of those worthy programs as it (meaning also we) can afford.

The state is $113 million behind on its current budget and is asking state agencies to help close the budget gap. The University of Maine System was asked to cut $13 million this year, and the immediate unhelpful response from the system office was telling. “In times like this,” said one of its spokespersons, “higher education should be protected as an essential and valuable state resource and partner, and not treated as some kind of rainy day fund.” This sounds as if the university system views other state services – prescription drugs for the elderly, foster care? – as inessential in comparison to, say, its budget for lawn maintenance. (I have no intention of picking on lawn maintenance per se. I am an admirer of the state universities’ many lawns; they’re top notch.)

The university system is cost heavy with staff and faculty, relatively light on programs, so with employee contracts and all it would have a hard time meeting the governor’s request. But the decisions it makes about how to spend its scarce dollars grow more important as the scarcity grows. More, there are so many new demands on the university system – particularly as a means of economic development – that it can count on this heightened scarcity far into the future. How will it protect its most important and promising functions if it puts up a blanket defense for all it does? It can’t.

A phenomenon that will push this along can be divided into two: rising competition for students, at least in the first half of a college career, from the new and more affordable Community College System (number of degree students up 38 percent in the last two years); and, second, a falling number of students available because of a declining birth rate. K-12 enrollment fell by 2,300 students this year; it is expected to fall by as much as 10 times that number over the next eight years. (Are we all spending so much time admiring university lawns that none remains for producing babies?)

A solution seemed at hand early this year when the Higher Education Joint Advisory Committee was announced: three college presidents each from the university and community college systems to slay waste, flay redundancy and play nice with each other by making credits easily transferable. Several good things have happened, but no proposal has yet made it from the committee to the offices of the chancellor or Community College System president. The systems’ good friend has noticed: At a university holiday party last week, says an unusually reliable fellow reveler, Gov. Baldacci told administrators that he has waited long enough for results. Move faster now, he reportedly told them.

The governor can talk like that because, first, he gets invited to these parties and, second, because he must – Maine is one of the few states without a formal board or agency to oversee its full range of higher education. But in this is his opportunity, certainly an opportunity beyond the immediate funding problem. He can charge that joint committee with doing much more – eliminate duplicative administration, propose incentives for savings, engage the faculty to link the two systems even more closely, substantially boost financial aid for low-income students (Chancellor Joseph Westphal has the right idea here), describe what a permanent higher-education oversight board should look like for Maine, tie the system tighter to the state’s economic plans. If higher ed’s potential costs are limitless so should be its eagerness for improvement.

Meanwhile, former Gov. King, knowing a good thing when he sees it, has joined the professorial class – Bowdoin College has invited him to teach a course called “Leaders and Leadership” this spring. For the record, he’ll be teaching one class.

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.