Apparently some members of the N.C. General Assembly and their staff think there is something wrong with North Carolina’s community colleges.

Too much money is being spent on these institutions, these officials indicate.

The Legislature’s answers to this “problem” are outlined in a report to the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee.

“Small colleges have higher administrative costs than larger ones,” reads a summary of the report. “Merging colleges could reduce costs and increase administrative efficiency.”

The report points toward mergers of small community colleges and the initiation of a purchasing pool to maximize community colleges’ buying power.

The report’s assertions seem reasonable on the surface, but a little digging reveals serious flaws in the study — an unreasonable response to a legislative directive to study community college inefficiencies.

“It may be argued that administrative costs for North Carolina’s community colleges should not be questioned because they are low,” reads Page 8 of the report. “For example, community college institutional support expenditures in Fiscal Year 2009-10 were $856 per student (full-time enrollment) as compared with $1,781 for the University of North Carolina system. However, data reported for North Carolina in the MGT of America (consulting firm) report and for other states suggest there may be opportunities to improve efficiency.”

So, on the basis of a study that, by its own admission, may not be necessary, the Legislature’s Program Evaluation Division recommends lawmakers upend a slew of successful educational institutions.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

And this report comes at a time when community colleges are performing the necessary work of retraining hundreds of workers who lost jobs during and after the Great Recession.

Once again, the Legislature has overstepped its bounds, this time by implying that local people should have little or no authority over their community colleges.

What will happen to Beaufort County Community College’s Board of Trustees if this proposal becomes reality?

What will happen to the quality of BCCC’s education if the campus near Washington becomes a “satellite” of Pitt Community College?

What does this report say to the thousands of BCCC graduates whose lives and careers might not have been so rewarding in the absence of a degree? Do these taxpayer-graduates think our state’s small community colleges are inefficient? Has anyone asked them?

The Legislature needs to file this report where it belongs: in File 13, otherwise known as the trash can.

This study has major flaws, and there is no compelling reason to tamper with community colleges’ success.