The present might well be a "teachable moment" for the university system of North Dakota.

The conditions are favorable. The university system has a new chancellor who is a seasoned public servant with a background in academia. The baton of leadership of some of the member institutions has been or will be passed along. The 2007 Legislature was relatively generous to higher education, allowing opportunities for advancement of education's cause.

It's timely for the university system to learn more about cooperation and coordination, in the spirit of the Roundtable on Higher Education and furthering the concept of the 11 institutions being a system, not avatars of the Lone Ranger.

There's nothing wrong with each college and university evolving in its understanding of its mission. There is a difficulty when degree programs or emphases are replicated past the offering of a core curriculum to first- or second-year students. It would make no sense for all the four-year schools to offer a petroleum engineering degree program, for instance.

Bismarck State College is developing a mission in energy training that should be - and remain - unique in the state's university system. Still, BSC can cooperate with Minot State University and Dickinson State University that offer various degree programs using facilities of the Bismarck campus.

Protection of turf is pervasive in academia and can be manifested by institutions as territoriality. A foray into western North Dakota last fall by administrators of the University of North Dakota seems now to be resulting in plans to increase the school's service to the economic sector of the western part of the state. A petroleum engineering laboratory is planned to meet some of the needs of the oil exploration and production industry.

Great care must be taken by UND that its enhancement of its role not be perceived to be at the expense of Minot State, Dickinson State or Williston State College. Whether an impingement would be fact or not, the perception and the feeling matter. It's not an analogy but an observation that foolhardy souls have learned how protective communities are of "their" schools of higher ed when the critics have suggested that certain schools be closed in order to make the number of institutions "more sensible."

Truth be told, the more pertinent matter is competition among institutions for students. The number of homegrown ones is quite finite. President Joseph Chapman, of North Dakota State University, made a good observation at a recent meeting that the state can be seen as too homogenous and should market itself better to out-of-state students of diverse ethnic groups and backgrounds.

At the same meeting this week, a two-day retreat of the Board of Higher Education, a legislator, Ken Svedjan, a Republican from Grand Forks, suggested the creation of a standing legislative committee to help form policy in higher ed and to coordinate education with the state's economic needs. Maybe it's needed, maybe not. It should be considered during the interim.

What is clear is that every means of encouraging coordination and cooperation within the system should be considered seriously.