WARNER

Tuesday marked the last day for Jack R. Warner, Rhode Island’s higher education commissioner since 2002. With his departure, Rhode Island lost three education leaders on the same day.

The commissioner of elementary and secondary education, Peter McWalters, and URI President Robert L. Carothers also both stepped down June 30 after tenures of about 18 years each.

Warner, 64, ran the Office of Higher Education, which coordinates the state’s three public colleges, the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island. He is credited with reversing a decline in enrollment and helping to expand the three institutions by about 3,000 students; working closely with the K-12 education system to ensure more high school graduates are ready for college; and establishing policies that ensure the three institutions run more efficiently while also strengthening academic quality.

Warner will assume a similar job in South Dakota this summer, where he will oversee six public universities and two state-run schools. There he will earn $323,000 a year — more than double his base pay of $135,000 a year as Rhode Island’s higher education chief.

Successors have already been appointed to replace McWalters and Carothers following national searches — Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist and URI’s new president, David M. Dooley, both of whom earn significantly more than the men they replaced.

But Warner’s job will remain vacant over the summer as a seven-member search team begins to interview candidates and recommend finalists to the Board of Governors for Higher Education, said Frank Caprio, chairman of the board.

“We’re shooting for the beginning of September,” Caprio said of appointing a new higher education commissioner. “We have some candidates we are very interested in, but the search committee hasn’t had a chance to interview them yet. We hope to do that around July 21st or 22nd.”

Caprio said the board will request a salary increase similar to Gist’s $200,000 contract.

Caprio praised Warner’s seven years in Rhode Island, while acknowledging that the state’s massive deficit has meant deep cuts to the $800-million public higher education system, which serves 40,000 students.

“Jack was a tireless advocate for access to public higher education and he was active in trying to keep education as affordable as possible for students,” Caprio said. In 2008, the board increased tuition and fees by 10 percent, a double-digit increase the board had tried to avoid, Caprio said.

“We had no choice and it was painful for the board, but especially painful for Jack,” he said. “But when you consider the state contribution to the higher education system was $178 million two years ago and was just about $150 million last year, that’s a painful fact, too.”

Tuition and fees will also increase by another 10 percent for the 2009-10 academic year. In addition, scores of positions have been left vacant at the three institutions and URI was forced to lay off some staff.

Warner said his greatest frustration has been “trying to convince people in the state about the investment value in public higher education,” a message that became harder to deliver as Rhode Island entered a recession, he said.

“We’ve certainly used this fiscal crisis to take a close look at everything we do,” Warner said. “We are trying to hold down our costs so we don’t have to raise our prices.”

Warner, who served as a higher education administrator in Massachusetts before moving to Rhode Island, said he will particularly miss his friends and co-workers in Rhode Island as he and his wife, Celeste, prepare to move to the Great Plains. They plan to retire in New England one day, to be near family and the sea.

jjordan@projo.com