West Central Technical College students may have their educational resources expanded next fall when a pending merger between the college and West Georgia Technical College is finalized July 1.

“I see this as a positive for both colleges,” said Dr. Skip Sullivan, president of WCTC. “We will be, upon completion of the process, probably the second largest technical college in the state.”

West Central has more than 4,000 students enrolled this fall and with construction projects expanding the campuses and an additional 2,000-plus students from West Georgia the combined college enrollment should be around 7,000 students next fall, he said.

West Georgia serves Troup, Heard and Meriwether counties, while West Central serves Carroll, Coweta, Douglas and Harlason counties. The wider coverage of the combine college will mean the school will have a larger legislative delegation concerned with it. It will also mean greater resources for the students, Sullivan said.

“West Georgia Technical College in LaGrange has numerous programs that we don’t have,” he said. “We have plenty that they don’t have. So, it’s going to open up the opportunity for us to expand programs.”

The two schools may be able to share faculties or equipment to start additional programs on the other campuses, Sullivan said. There will also be more student organizations available once the campuses are joined and it may also open the door to collaborative learning projects between the campuses, he said.

The merger was introduced by the Technical College System of Georgia as a cost-saving measure in response to Gov. Sonny Perdue’s mandate that all state agencies cut their budgets by 6 percent, said Mike Light, spokesman for the system.

The system has begun the process of merging 14 of its colleges including WCTC and West Georgia Technical College and will go from 33 colleges in the system to 26 after July 1, Light said. The consolidations save the system roughly $3.5 million statewide, $500,000 with each merger, he said.

“We will save money statewide on administrative costs by eliminating duplicated administrative positions,” Light said. “We hope, though, to deal with those affected positions and assimilate as many as we can elsewhere in the system. But it will mean that a few high level positions could be eliminated.”

The number and the actual positions that will be eliminated have yet to be determined, he said, but probably the vice president posts of the colleges will be consolidated. The colleges are working to see where the overlapping responsibilities would be and each merger is slightly different, he said.

“By doing this, we’re kind of pulling a good from the negative in the sense that by combining these colleges, we’re going to give our students an expanded array of opportunities between the two colleges,” Light said.

Sullivan agreed. Combining the colleges and their programs will benefit all the students in western Georgia, he said. Geographically, West Georgia is close enough that the consolidation makes sense, he said. Now instead of competing for students, the colleges will collaborate to educate them.

“Our number one goal is to protect the interests and quality of education of our students, and I think that we can do that in this merger,” Sullivan said. “They (students) would only see an enhanced college when they come back next fall.”

In addition to the West Central-West Georgia merger, 12 other technical colleges in the system are on the consolidation list: Griffin and Flint River Technical colleges, Swainsboro and Southeastern Technical colleges, Valdosta and East Central Technical colleges, Northwestern and Coosa Valley Technical colleges, Appalachian and North Georgia Technical colleges as well as Chattahoochee and North Metro Technical colleges.