The University of Maine System is preparing to reorganize, downsize and centralize into four institutions: Orono, the University of Southern Maine, the University of Northern Maine and Farmington. The proposed plan would place the University of Maine at Augusta within the University of Southern Maine, merge Machias, Fort Kent and Presque Isle into the University of Northern Maine and close several outreach centers in rural Maine. The fate of the University College at Bangor, currently part of Augusta, is unclear.

We propose a different vision based on geography, opportunity and complementarity: the University of Central Maine (UCM), to consist of Augusta, Machias, Bangor, Lewiston-Auburn and outreach centers in Belfast, Ellsworth and Calais. These campuses share the geography of central (not southern or northern) Maine. The faculty and programs of the component parts of UCM complement rather than duplicate each other, and they share a long-standing entrepreneurial commitment to distance education and access unmatched within the system.

UCM would merge the institutions most damaged and downgraded by the proposed plan into a strong 7,000-plus student institution with the capacity and drive to become a public University of Phoenix, using innovative live and distance education to serve students in central Maine and across the nation and the globe.

The plan currently under consideration was not developed with any meaningful participation from the communities it threatens to diminish, and it offers them little but reduced stature and prospects. Our vision does not reject the need for change but seeks to build rather than destroy while recognizing geographic reality, program diversity and the critical importance and potential of distance education.

An easy case can be made that we have provided few details of how and why UCM will improve the delivery of public higher education in Maine. In fact, we have provided much the same level of detail found in the proposed plan, except with a vision that offers considerably more hope and potential.

The chancellor and Board of Trustees are committed to implementing their proposal this fall. Their plan has succeeded in dividing the system community into perceived winners and losers. Without a greater consensus, the likely consequence of implementation will be a nasty fight in the Legislature, which, regardless of the outcome, can only serve to damage the system as a whole.

At a minimum, system policy-makers must demonstrate to the “losing” communities that they have seriously considered this and other alternatives in order to avoid damaging the entire system. We believe that such an honest examination is critical, overdue and likely to result in substantial improvements to the plan. As faculty members with 40-plus years of service to the university and the state, we stand ready to work – or fight – for a stronger university system for all of Maine.

Carol Kontos is an associate professor of English at the University of Maine at Augusta and a former Democratic legislator. Jon Reisman is an associate professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Maine at Machias and was the 1998 Republican nominee in the 2nd Congressional District.