In a modern world it’s hard to connect the dots when the dots keep moving. That’s why we’ll draw a line between two unrelated reports in Sunday’s Butler Eagle.

One of the stories, on Page 2, was about the presidents of three Western Pennsylvania community colleges discussing the changing role of their institutions in society and how the schools can help businesses and workers.

Presidents Nick Neupauer Butler County Community College, Quintin Bullock of Community College of Allegheny County and Chris Reber of the Community College of Beaver County, discussed how rapid changes in demographics and economics have affected their institutions.

More important were their insights into how they anticipated the changes and prepared for them.

“The nation’s landscape is changing and our students are becoming more and more diverse,” Bullock said. “At the same time our students are becoming economically savvy, meaning understanding the value that a community college can provide them: access to education as well as preparation for the work force.”

Anticipation of change becomes as important as the changes themselves. As Neupauer noted, “The pendulum has swung in favor of the community college. It’s for those reasons: high-tech jobs, affordability.”

The schools are enrolling more students who are first in their family to attend a college. And the colleges are striving to establish relationships with younger students as well, and with their high schools, through high school academy programs. In these programs, students in grades 10 through 12 spend half of their time in high school and half of their time getting training and taking classes toward an associate degree.

Perhaps the community colleges should go one step further and establish a new academic discipline that deals entirely with changes. It could be called change management and would include a smattering of economics, civics, social studies, engineering, communications, administration and marketing.

Would there be a demand for a major in change management? There should be a demand. Consider the other story in Sunday’s edition, the one on Page 1 about the county joining a lawsuit against phone service providers.

Under state law, phone companies are supposed to add a surcharge for 911 services to every phone line. The companies are supposed to send that money to the counties that the phone lines are in to pay for their 911 centers.

But data obtained by the county suggested up to 15 telephone companies may have misrepresented the types and number of phone lines the 911 assessments are applied to, causing significant under billing.

Timothy Carson is an attorney with Dilworth Paxson, the Philadelphia law firm that’s driving the class-action lawsuit against 15 phone companies. Carson said the phone companies “fool around with the definition” of what counts as a line. He said residential landlines and cell phones are not where the problem lies. The issues stem from medium to large commercial accounts.

In essence, the lawsuit contends that the county had no way of knowing that the companies collectively owe Butler County almost $11 million in unpaid 911 surcharges over the past 6 years. Another way of saying it is that nobody has been paying attention to the specific changes in the telephone business that allowed many companies to evade their share of the surcharge — which essentially is a tax — and the rest of us were forced to make up the difference.

Now a law firm in Philadelphia anticipates a very big payday — and who can begrudge the attorneys for doing a good job of identifying such a large windfall for unsuspecting clients, and claiming a share of that windfall for its services? More power to ’em.

It’s just one instance of how millions of dollars went unpaid as a result of rapid changes. It took a trained eye to spot the discrepancy.

Butler County’s $10.9 million claim represents damages for just one county in Pennsylvania. Dilworth Paxson is representing several other counties with similar claims. There are similar lawsuits pending in other states as well. The issue represents just one change in one business that affects hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected revenue and unpaid fees.

It’s a clear illustration of the importance of tracking, analyzing and anticipating the repercussions and impacts of changes in our culture and economy — and a hint at the great value employers will place on employees who can spot the developing trends.