The University of Maine System board of trustees has announced a “dramatic” consolidation of its administrative functions.

Maine has seven campuses, each with its own president, administrative team, and more. Then there’s the system itself, which operates out of offices in Bangor, which has its own chancellor, and duplicate administrators.

With 30,000 students statewide, all seven schools are about the size of a single state university elsewhere.

Chancellor James Page said that the Bangor office would be closed down and the functions farmed out to the university where they make the most sense. For instance, Augusta handles purchasing for the entire system. Last year, IT functions were consolidated, human resources was approved to be combined, and finance will be consolidated as well.

It was also decided that each of the campuses would have unique curricula, and that students choosing particular majors would attend particular schools instead of duplicating major programs everywhere.

This is a good start, but there are other areas for improvement.

There’s not enough news coming out of the system to support a fulltime press officer, unless that person is coordinating all news from all campuses. Since the campuses would have a better handle on things and have access to photograph events, this is one job it makes sense not to consolidate. But the public affairs person at the system level and his $80,000 salary could be cut.

The University System says that the decisions they’ve already taken will save $5 million per year, and consolidating human resources will save $1.4 million over four years. Honestly, that’s a drop in a very large bucket of red ink.

The deficit by 2019 is expected to be $69 million per year in the system, and the pain this year has been palpable — cutting 157 positions and using one-time emergency funds to close this year’s deficit of $36 million. Clearly, the system can’t continue to bleed red ink, but there should be a more enterprising effort toward higher education in the state.

One issue where there is room for movement involves the resources of the community colleges and the university system.

There is no plan to close any of the seven university campuses, but perhaps there should be, or at least to consolidate with the existing community colleges in the same regions.

In several communities, there are community colleges and universities or university colleges literally across the street from one another, offering very similar programs. It would make much more sense for the two campuses to be able to work together to offer the same program at one or the other campus, giving the correct credit for the sending institution.

If the university campuses are to be kept, it is difficult to understand why the three smallest ones, with a total population of about 1,800 students, cannot function under the same administrative leadership with a single president, admissions, financial aid, and other student services team.

UMaine has also been very late to the online university game, and is being left in the dust by out-of-state colleges, some of whom are providing actual baccelaureate degrees without ever setting foot in a classroom. Because our student body is so far-flung, Maine may represent a situation where this is not a bad use of some of the scarce resources, especially for older or nontraditional students who want to complete an education years after leaving college, or for those whose work or family committments don’t allow them to participate in campus life.

Or those who can’t afford to live on campus in a rural town where there are no job opportunities.

We applaud what the system has done so far, but more must be done, and it shouldn’t be done on the backs of those getting the education, or those doing the actual educating. There are many other options, and some of those should be entertained.