The following document is a plan for downsizing the College in the event that future budgets are significantly less than current budgets. The document is arranged in a somewhat inverted order.  The long winded explanation follows the presentation of the guiding tenets and the order in which cuts are made.

Guiding core tenets in priority order

1. Survive as an Associate's Degree granting institution.
2. Preserve national quality of life
   1. Educate the educators
   2. Provide primary health fields pre·education
3. Reduce costs
   1. Newer, less developed programs, or programs that are not in place at this time are shut down.
   2. Cut more costly programs ahead of lower cost programs
   3. Cut programs that benefit only a few students ahead of programs that benefit a larger number of students
4. Preserve programmatic choice for students as long as possible, noting that cost reduction and boutique program termination have a higher priority.

The Onion

The following represents an ordered list of layers of the College to "peel away" in a downsizing effort.  Start at the top and remove layers one at a time until the remaining core matches the available budget.

• Vocational and technical education consolidation at FMI campus.  No CIP monies spent on any other campus.  Other campuses can proceed with vocational and technical training, but only by using non-College monies such as OMIP and state legislature money.   If these programs are truly important to the states, then let them support them.
• No new CIP monies and no support for votech at any campus.  The College recommends that votech be done by the high schools and through apprenticeship programs overseen by the high schools and state agencies.  The high schools can deliver these programs with greater efficiency than the College.
• Yap FMI campus shutdown.
• Agriculture program is terminated.
• IEP Yap shutdown.  Students moved into ESL courses at the national campus.
• IEP Kosrae shutdown. Students moved into ESL courses at the national campus.
• Fourth year education program development terminated.
• IEP Pohnpei shutdown. Students moved into ESL courses at the national campus.
• IEP Chuuk shutdown. Students moved into ESL courses at the national campus.
• CIS program terminated.
• Marine science program terminated.
• In-service education programs ended at state campuses.
• HRM programs are terminated.
• 100 level and above course delivery at the state campuses terminated.  State campuses deliver certificates only.
• Committee system at the main campus is restructured. Most committees are eliminated and decision making responsibility is shifted to administrators.  For example, the VPIA approves outlines and clears faculty to teach a course based on qualifications.   Departmental chairs return to full five section loads.
• Micronesian studies shuts down.
• Third year education in-service program terminated. Third year continues to exist only at the national campus.
• Accounting degree ended.
• Business degree ended.
• Business department shuts down.
• Pohnpei campus shuts down.  Students are sent to national campus.
• Kosrae campus shuts down.
• Yap campus shuts down.
• Chuuk campus shuts down.
• Trims in administration are made to reflect single campus structure.
• LA/Nursing programs is ended. Upper level life science courses terminated.
• Third year pre-service program at the national
• Education Associate's Degree is terminated.  Liberal Arts degree at national campus is the only remaining program.
• Liberal Arts Associate's degree is terminated.  College is turned over to Pohnpei DOE as an expansion high school.

The Long Winded Rambling Section

After four and a half-hours in the audiovisual room I staggered out into the sunshine and humid air of Pohnpei in December. Five hours after the first cup of coffee was consumed the planning council seemed to be back where we had begun. Five campuses. Four vocational technical programs offering all possible skills. Plus FMI. Plus in-service education. HRM. IEP. We could agree only not to expand. Contraction was not deemed possible.

The planning council meeting seemed to be our own version of the failed Kyoto climate change talks. Even as sea levels rise and inundate low lying areas, the countries of the world cannot agree to move back to 1990 emission levels of green house gases. As if 1990 levels would not incur further global warming.

The College could not even agree to return to our smaller 1993 self, let alone anything prior. Yet the need to reduce may be thrust upon us.

At the planning council we were briefed on the potential limitations of future Compact related funding in regards higher education. I would like to here reinforce the potential for reduced future funding with the following statements by Allan Stayman at the recent January round of Compact negotiations:

"We must work together to assure that any new agreement overcomes the planning and management problems identified by the GAO. Those findings make it unrealistic to expect Congress to continue total assistance to the FSM at or above current levels….

"As to the level of funding, the U.S. believes that the FSM can manage a reduction in U.S. assistance for several reasons…

"The final area of concern regards continuation of U.S. domestic services and programs. Your proposal to continue all services and programs at current levels must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, because of the range of issues raised by the various agencies involved. Our experience over the past 14 years of the Compact is that applying U.S. domestic programs in a foreign jurisdiction presents unique problems." - Allan Stayman, Special Negotiator for Compact of Free Association, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 11 January 2001.

As I walked around the campus decompressing from the planning council meeting the thought occurred to me that while expansion is best managed by committees, contraction cannot be achieved by consensus and committee decision-making.

While I fondly hope we can continue to grow and to offer ever more programs to our burgeoning citizenry, we still need a map in the vault of the way to downsize.

I have no expertise on downsizing, but I have a couple pennies in my pocket that I can contribute.

I have distinct biases as I write this paper, biases that underlie the structure of what I will be presenting.

I think the College's core mission, our most fundamental reason for existing, for post-secondary education in the FSM, is our founding and our antecedent mission: educating educators. Sending FSM citizens abroad for teaching credentials is simply excessively expensive for this nation. Hence the development of PONTEC, MTEC, and then the Community of College of Micronesia.

That said my final fallback position, last rock in the ocean to stand on, will not be an education program but a simple no-frills LA/AA degree with very little administrative superstructure. An AA degree is the minimum we need for Pell eligibility, and the LA is the cheapest way to deliver that degree. The logic is, "What could we afford to do if all we had was the Pell grant?" At that point, at the "Pell only" point, you go for the cheapest and easiest program to run.

Of course this presumes continuation of the Pell grant, but that seems plausibly likely based on my understanding of the documents relating to the Compact negotiations.

Why not make an Education AA the "final stand" in the plan? I concur with Dr. Womack: an education AA contains too little content. Education must be a third year program. Thus the third year program will be one of the last to go.

Education, more specifically educating educators, is a core bias in this plan. Secondarily health careers preparation will be a bias. Health and education are two fields critical to the quality of life in any nation. These two areas must be priority areas for retention when it comes to deciding what to toss and what to keep.

The plan is intended to work like an onion. Layers are peeled off until you get to the system you can afford. At the center of the onion is a single campus running a single Pell eligible degree. I know that many will object to the Pell tail that wags the dog, but Pell funds are the surest thing we have to utilize in a final stand.

The order of the layers is obviously going to be heatedly debated. I will be widely reviled for having produced this document.  My biases are stated as core tenets at the top of this document. 

In the plan I shed vocational and technical education early and often. This nation gets a bigger bang for its votech dollar by shifting limited financial rescues to existing votech programs in the high schools and into apprenticeship programs. We do not need to be in the votech business in order for vocational technical education to occur in this country.

The rest of the layers of the onion come down to "in what order do you close and end which and what programs and campuses?"  No committee will ever be able to decide this.  I learned that in the planning council meeting.  This is because someone has to stand up and say: "Close me down, fire me and put an end to all of my hard work."

I am optimistic and hope that we might move forward ever expanding. I can only hope that a downsizing plan will not be needed

I also hope this document is food for thought. Or at least causes people to throw tennis balls at my head. I leave with a final statement by Allan Stayman in January that sent chills down my spine but underlines the uncertain nature of the future, "Finally, I want to remind you that the U.S. plans to make a proposal regarding the immigration provisions of the Compact." An education remains the best weapon for survival in an uncertain and changing world.

Dana Lee Ling
23 January 2001