Merger idea deserves a little more thought

There are so many puzzling questions about last week's abrupt announcement that Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Mo., wants to merge into the vast University of Missouri system. So let's start with this: Why would the 60,000-student, four-campus University of Missouri bother with a 6,500-student campus that is closer to Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas than to most of Missouri's 114 counties?

The proposed merger came as a surprise to just about everyone who ought to have been consulted before Dean Hubbard, president of Northwest, and Elson Floyd, MU's president, had their first face-to-face meeting just days before announcing they had hit it off famously and thought the merger sounded like a dandy thing to do.

Legislators, for example, were not consulted. These are the same harried legislators who have less than four weeks left in the current session to balance a budget still $700 million short on funding.

Hubbard and Floyd said they hoped the legislature would approve the merger this year so the schools could start the merger process when the new fiscal year starts July 1.

Even the state representative from Maryville, who is a Northwest alumnus, had his breath taken away by both the announcement and the speed with which the two university presidents wanted to conclude the deal. State Rep. Brad Lager sagely opined that the merger proposal deserved a more methodical approach.

Other legislators echoed Lager's sentiments. Estimates of how many pieces of legislation would have to be researched, written, reviewed by committees, debated and voted on run into the hundreds. Even the most adept legislative staff would be hard-pressed to fulfill that order and still keep up with everything else that has to be done before the middle of May.

There are other questions about the merger. How would the Northwest campus be governed and administered? What would the admissions policies be at Northwest? How much would the tuition be at MU's fifth campus? And -- this could well be the stickiest issue of all -- what would the Northwest campus be called after the merger?

Historically, Northwest has been the least expensive of Missouri's five regional universities -- so cheap, in fact, that folks in Northwest Missouri refer to the school as "Southwest Iowa State University" because so many Iowans cross their own state's border to take advantage of tuition and fees far below those at any Iowa school.

Hubbard and Floyd said the merger would give Northwest resources to expand programs while eliminating duplication of effort. These are laudable goals, but they could easily be accomplished without a merger. In fact, these are the same goals that have been advocated by the Coordinating Board for Higher Education for years without much success.

By the way, the Coordinating Board for Higher Education wasn't consulted either.