N.J. lawmakers still fuzzy on Camden-Rowan merger plan

Three months after an advisory board suggested the merger of Rowan University and Rutgers-Camden, state lawmakers are no closer to knowing how it would work, what it would cost, or what say they have in the matter.

Even those who support the concept, including Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester) and Ali Houshmand, Rowan's interim president, say they need more details before proceeding.

Gov. Christie wants action on the board's merger recommendation by July 1. That does not seem possible, say the schools.

"We don't have any timeline for a Camden-Rowan merger because we really don't have any specific plan yet," Peter J. McDonough Jr., a Rutgers University spokesman, told lawmakers Monday at a joint Higher Education Committee hearing at Rowan University.

"There are practical issues, there are financial issues," he said, "and we really haven't even begun to look at those."

Christie, a Republican, was expected to use an executive order to implement the merger. But last week, an appellate court ruled that he overstepped his bounds when he ordered the dismantling last year of the Council on Affordable Housing.

Christie could suffer a similar fate if he declared the merger without the approval of the Democratic-controlled Senate and Assembly, some lawmakers say they believe.

"I tend to think this has to be done legislatively," Sweeney said after testifying Monday. "We need more details, and we need to move quick."

Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D., Hudson), chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said she was not sure how much control the Legislature would have.

About 250 people packed a room in the student center in Glassboro to attend the second joint hearing of the Assembly and Senate higher-education committees. The first was held earlier this month in Newark.

McDonough, Rutgers vice president of public affairs, serves on a committee formed by the governor to iron out the logistics of folding three North Jersey medical facilities into the university's campus in New Brunswick. No similar committee has been formed to take up the merger in South Jersey.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, School of Public Health, and Cancer Institute of New Jersey would become part of Rutgers.

McDonough told lawmakers that the committee expected to have "clarity for some action" about that merger by July 1. He said he believed any mergers would require legislation.

Dozens of faculty members from Rutgers-Camden told lawmakers Monday that if their Camden campus were absorbed by Rowan, they would leave.

"I took the job at Rutgers-Camden, turning down two other offers - one of which would have paid me more than twice as much money - not just because of the prestige of the Rutgers name, but because it gave me the opportunity to research as well as teach," said Kate Epstein, a tenure-track assistant professor of history.

At Rutgers, she teaches two classes a semester, leaving her time for research at a university with a library of 3.5 million books. Rowan requires humanities professors to teach four courses per semester and puts less emphasis on research when considering promotions and tenure, she said. The Rowan library has only 420,000 volumes.

"You cannot have a research university without research faculty," Epstein said.

"A proposal that did not offer answers to such basic questions as these would be laughed out of a corporate boardroom," she said.

Even some Rowan faculty who support the merger said it would cost taxpayers millions. The onetime cost for the North Jersey mergers is estimated at $40 million, Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick has said.

The cost for the Rutgers-Camden and Rowan merger has not been released.

"It is naive to believe that there aren't significant costs associated with this merger," said Eric Milou, the president of Rowan's faculty senate, who teaches mathematics. "Let's be clear: A merger is not something that can happen by fiat or order. It's going to take interaction. . . . Please remember that universities are not businesses."

Wendell Pritchett, chancellor of Rutgers-Camden, said Monday that South Jersey's colleges needed more investment and collaboration. But he said he believed Rutgers-Camden and Rowan could find ways to work together that are cheaper and easier than merging.

The schools already have the framework to create a genomics research center.

"We can do this," Pritchett said, "at a fraction of the cost."