To: President Mark Becker

From: Donna Carney, Georgia State University, Student Success Coordinator

Date: June 15, 2015

In regards to the merger between Georgia State University (GSU) with Georgia Perimeter
College (GPC) I would like to discuss my main concerns about the administrative aspects of the
merger. I have been through a merger at another college. A merger is not a fun thing. When two
colleges come together to become one there will be many issues to reckon with. As stated by
McBain (2009)

Mergers are part of the historical cycle of American higher education and not aberrations
stemming from the current recession. As such, it is prudent for state and institutional
decision-makers to examine the history of higher education mergers when considering
merger proposals.

The first issue I would like to discuss is the duplication of services. How will we distribute the
workload between the employees of the new institution? How many people will lose their jobs?
It is very difficult to keep all the employees from both colleges if the administrative services are
combined. Learning a new culture can be challenging, but is especially so when employees are
faced with uncertainty about what the future may hold and whose job is on the chopping block
(Richards, n.d.).

At my former place of employment we kept all of the employees of the Administrative Services
department when the merger occurred. However, since the department members were in
different cities it was difficult to distribute the workload to keep everyone busy. Not only did it
slow down our response time to purchase orders, invoices, and payment of invoices it also led to
an extreme shuffling of papers. Documents had to be sent to various campus locations via the
campus inner-office mail system. I cannot even begin to tell you how many documents were lost
in this system. We had angry vendors and employees calling wanting to know where there check
was. It took several years but the administrative process improved.

Extreme employee morale problems resulted due to the merger. We went through two different
Presidents and one interim President. The new President has been very diligent in working to
repair the broken relationships and improving our financial status. When the merger occurred,

one college was very strong and had a large carryover of funds from a previous year. The other
college was very weak in its financial position. The President at the time was friends with many
employees at the sister college that was merged into the financially stable college. The President
created new leadership positions and put his friends in these positions with very high salaries.
After two years, the financial reserves were depleted and the college was financially broke.
Management decided that a reduction-in-force (RIF) was necessary to keep the institution afloat.
The RIF was executed and our finances got worse because there was no money available to pay
out the employees annual leave balances. The college ended up having to borrow $ 400,000
from a fellow college.

In closing, I just want you to understand the merger will not be stress-free for our employees. I
think it would be an excellent idea if we could have workshops for our employees in an effort to
calm their fears and try to eliminate the presence of poor morale that may be caused by the
merger. Our employees are assets to us and we owe it to them to keep them informed and plan
accordingly for a smooth transition for all involved.

References
Richards, L. (n.d.). The Effects of Merger and Acquisition on Employee Morale. Retrieved from
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effects-merger-acquisition-employee-morale-3196.html
McBain, L. (2009, July 1). College and University Mergers: Recent Trends. Retrieved from
http://www.aascu.org/uploadedFiles/AASCU/Content/Root/PolicyAndAdvocacy/PolicyPublicati
ons/PM-CollegeUniversityMergers.pdf