This state has a good – but also serious – problem. From Wells to South Portland to Auburn to Fairfield to Presque Isle, too many people are applying to community college.

Fall applications increased between 1.8 percent and 18 percent at five of six campuses; only Washington County Community College in Calais has seen applications decrease. At Central Maine Community College in Auburn, the increase is 6.5 percent; while this doesn’t equal enrollment, conventional wisdom dictates all ships rise with the tide.

This is tremendous news for education in Maine and a feather in the cap for the Baldacci administration, which spearheaded the creation of community colleges in 2003.

Yet this expansion has coincided with rocky times for the University of Southern Maine and University of Maine, both of which have experienced fiscal and/or enrollment difficulties.

In May, the University of Maine cut nearly $16 million in spending and raised tuition and fees by 10.1 percent to balance its budget. The University of Southern Maine has a reported deficit of $8.2 million.

USM has attributed enrollment struggles to competition from the community colleges, which have siphoned potential students from the system’s campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston-Auburn. The university’s new president, Selma Botman, visited Lewiston this week and said “people will have to live within their means.”

There are important new faces at UMaine too.

Fiscal issues at the university have attracted Rebecca Wyke, the former commissioner of the state’s Department of Administrative and Financial Services, away from where the governor wanted her, the Finance Authority of Maine.

Wyke was announced this week as the university’s new Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration, pending her approval by trustees. “Becky is the best person to help safeguard one of our state’s most important public assets,” Gov. John Baldacci said about the appointment.

Some consider Wyke the most influential person in the state. At UMaine, she’s tasked with improving flagging finances, the same way she turned around Maine’s budget picture for the Baldacci administration.

Wyke’s forsaking of FAME for UMaine’s fortunes reflects the university’s current needs and the significant challenges ahead.

The rising success of community colleges holds lessons for both USM and UMaine. For students, it seems, cost and convenience reign most important. While engaging, innovative curricula will attract certain students, the basics – like expense and ease – will lure and retain many more.

University administrators must do more to lower financial barriers to their institutions, or expect to keep losing this edge to the community colleges. Recent state funding trends, plus a looming $400 million projected shortfall in the next state budget, may prevent cost competitiveness, however.

In this case, another course is obvious, if historically unpalatable.

That is again considering if Maine’s university system is as efficient, effective and sustainable as possible – and whether some campuses should either be closed or consolidated. In the past, this idea has been controversial.

It incited the Legislature in 2004 and forced former UMaine chancellor Joseph Westphal to resign.

But if the pictures at the four-year universities fail to improve, while ranks at community colleges continue to swell, building the best higher education system for Maine may mean revisiting it.