Elsa Nunez is new to Maine, but she understands perfectly that the organization that brought her here is not what it claimed. Dr. Nunez joined the University of Maine System as vice chancellor last September, or thought she did. “We are not a system,” she has concluded. “We’re a loose federation of institutions in competition with each other.”

Yes. And they are a costly federation that has sacrificed academic quality for political harmony. Rather than tell the public or, more dangerously, legislators that the current network of universities, campuses, centers and learning sites is unaffordable and will never become affordable, UMS has tried to toss more money at scholarships, draw more grants for research and development and expand university endowments. All of these should be pursued, but for other reasons. They do not solve the problem at hand.

Access was what counted in higher education in the 1980s and ’90s. Anyone who wanted to take a college course would have just a short drive to one of the seven university campuses or to a center (there are 11 of them) or a site (100 of them). Access is a good thing, but access to what? As has been noted by various state officials who have taken the time to look, the university system is simultaneously overbuilt and under-responsive. This situation now has become more serious for many reasons, including meager growth in UMS’s state appropriation, a new Community College System teaching more associate-of-arts students and the fact that about 15 years ago Mainers began choosing to have fewer babies – their absence is now being felt in Maine’s high schools and soon will be felt in college. More than these, however, is the state’s chronic nickle-and-diming of the university system, slowly eroding the quality of its academics.

Tuition rose a substantial 7 percent at UMS last year, even so that’s expected to leave a shortfall by 2008 of $85 million, the equivalent of the annual budgets at the universities at Farmington, Presque Isle, Machias and Fort Kent combined. The state won’t make up that money and tuition cannot make it up. As Vice Chancellor Nunez, who wrote the plan, observed of the reform, “If we don’t do this, what are we going to do?”

Her boss, Chancellor Joseph Westphal, is even more emphatic, looking over not just university governance but state government generally. “If Maine doesn’t start changing in every direction,” he said, “we’re going to be singing the same song about an aging population, poverty and outmigration forever.”

University system trustees and presidents have proposed the biggest realignment of UMS since its founding in 1968. The universities in Presque Isle, Machias and Fort Kent would combine to become the University of Northern Maine, with baccalaureate and graduate programs, one administration and one faculty over three campuses. The University of Southern Maine would subsume UMaine-Augusta, spreading geographically but being limited in scope – it would not become a major research university. Two-year degrees would be phased out and passed to the community colleges; back-office work would be centralized, the sites would shift to local high schools; some centers would close; others would fall under either USM or the new University of Northern Maine. Finally, the University of Maine would be led to do what it ought to have done: a top-to-bottom evaluation of its programs, with an emphasis on strengthening the quality of instruction and research. If successful, a system of distinct and necessary parts would be created, north to south, with the system’s role more clearly defined and the benefits to Maine apparent.

The expected savings from these changes is $15.5 million annually, which would be rolled back into the campuses to reduce some of that shortfall. But the universities themselves, under the scrutiny of performance-based budgeting, would be forced to reallocate more than that. They would need to show more often an active, committed faculty matched with an engaged, inquiring, striving student body. About the University of Maine, Chancellor Westphal said, “People there need to be excited about the place and we need to give them back the tools to get vitality back to the institution.”

The chancellor introduced his strategic plan at around noon Thursday. Surprisingly, the doubters waited a respectful 30 or so minutes – almost enough time to read the plan – before picking it apart. Not that there aren’t places to pick: It is unclear how well the two northern and one eastern campus would operate together, whether the community colleges could take up the demand for associate-of-arts degrees, what would happen to the University College at Bangor, what sort of campus UMaine-Augusta would become.

These are serious concerns, and the lack of immediate answers for them will drive UMS in one of two ways: Faculty and their friends in Augusta will either shrink from the uncertainty and insist that little happen, ensuring mediocrity or worse, or they will see that in this absence of answers are opportunities for applying their own ideas to this reform.

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything,” said Robert Frost, whose own use for college was limited, “without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

This is the challenge for Maine: to debate this plan energetically, accept disagreement in the pursuit of a better system and be willing to modify the plan where the evidence warrants. But UMS should begin with the certainty that major reform must come to Maine’s universities. As even a newcomer such as Dr. Nunez says, If not this reform, then what?

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.