FARGO (AP) - A legislator says mediation may be necessary to settle a dispute involving the role of the chancellor of the state university system.

State Rep. Eliot Glassheim, D-Grand Forks, commented in the wake of Chancellor Robert Potts' threats to quit unless North Dakota State University President Joseph Chapman acknowledges his authority.

Glassheim said the dispute is part of an ongoing debate involving different visions of the chancellor's role and the state Board of Higher Education.

"One is that it's a single system under a chancellor who reports to the board, and the other is, it's a gathering of 10 or 11 institutions and each one is pretty much autonomous and has a lot of leeway to do what it wants," Glassheim said.

He said he hopes the Board of Higher Education will back the chancellor.

"In my view, it would not be good to go back to the old way of having each institution compete with the other institution and have their own lobbyists and have their own building projects, and be fighting amongst each other for who can get 1 percent more of the pie," Glassheim said.

Potts has agreed to stay on until mid-July while committee, which includes Chapman, reviews the responsibilities of the Board of Higher Education and college administrators.

The dispute has been the subject of editorials in newspapers around the state. The Forum, in an editorial Sunday, said Potts should leave.

"The chancellor apparently does not understand North Dakotans' aversion to vesting too much power in an executive," The Forum editorial said. "The state has a weak governor by design. Similarly, the higher ed chancellor is supposed to oversee the University System, not micromanage individual campuses or treat campus administrators as his hired hands."

Other newspapers took different views.

The Minot Daily News wrote that board members "should reaffirm Potts' authority as chancellor, since it is the person in that position who represents the board and enforces the board's decisions. No one university president or university is larger than the university system itself."

The Grand Forks Herald editorial said: "Only Chapman seems unwilling to admit that North Dakota's interests take precedence over those of his institution, NDSU. But the state board should reject that every-school-for-itself approach, and instead join the consultant, chancellor and other presidents in affirming a unified system of higher education in the state."

Lloyd Omdahl, a former lieutenant governor and political analyst whose column appears in newspapers around the state, wrote that a unified university system has been "an elusive objective" since the board was created in the 1930s and the authority necessary for a strong administrator was never delegated to the chancellor.

"The problem Potts now is having would be solved very quickly if he had the authority to hire and fire presidents. But that idea is frightening to the board - and most of the people involved in higher education," Omdahl wrote.

The Bismarck Tribune, referring to Potts and Chapman, wrote that the "best outcome would be if both could stop circling each other, find enough of a working relationship left to salvage, demonstrate consummate professionalism and commitment to higher education and get along, each in his proper role.

"The board should tell them clearly what that role is," the Tribune editorial said. "End the unseemly feud, and everybody get to work."