By Bethany Barnes, Las Vegas Review-Journal

When state lawmakers wanted ideas about how to improve the state’s community colleges last year, the Nevada System of Higher Education hired a Colorado-based think tank to scrutinize the four schools.

But when the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems produced a report highly critical of the state’s higher education leadership, the study was quashed.

A series of emails between higher education system officials obtained by the Review-Journal through the state’s public records law shows state officials feared the report could be used by their critics and suppressed the findings in fear that reforms would dramatically reduce their authority over the schools.

In an email, Constance Brooks, the higher education system’s vice chancellor for government and community affairs, remarked to colleagues that the report shed a “very negative light” on the state’s Board of Regents and asked if the audience for the report was the system’s “antagonists.”

“I say we just take what we like out of the report and do away with the rest,” she suggested.

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