ME: Independent Eliot Cutler Proposes Education Reform

From the Maine Campus:

Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate in the 2010 Maine gubernatorial election, believes Maine’s current system of postsecondary education is destined to fail. “We’re a state of 1.3 million people. We have 14 separate campuses — seven community college campuses and seven university campuses,” said Cutler, a Cape Elizabeth attorney, in a February telephone interview. “The [University of Maine] system and the community college system don’t communicate with each other.”

Cutler said the system is undermining itself because many community college credits are non-transferable within the University of Maine System. He said functions and programs in the two systems are being duplicated — a serious problem for a fiscally challenged state. “We need to merge the systems. They ought to be under the same governing board; they should be under the same executive. They should be much more closely coordinated with [the] K-12 education system in Maine,” Cutler said.