Community colleges push back
They see big budget cut rationalized as reform
Community college trustees and administrators never expected to be exempt from budget cuts. Not next year. But they are particularly irked over how Gov. Jerry Brown is framing the 6.8 percent, $400 million funding decrease and a $10 per credit increase that he is proposing for the 112 community colleges’ budgets next year. He is presenting the cut as a reform and the higher fees as quality protection. Neither is the case, they say.
Brown wants to raise fees from $26 to $36 per credit, a 40 percent increase. California’s tuition would still be the lowest in the nation, and families earning under $65,000 would qualify to have the increase waived. But Brown is proposing to use the $110 million in additional revenue not to improve programs and services but to fund the growth in student enrollment. So it would be disingenuous to tell students facing longer wait lists and more crowded classes that higher fees would in any way benefit them, they said during a conference call last week of the Community College League of California, which lobbies for the colleges.
The $400 million cut would be a move toward ending the practice of reimbursing colleges for the number of students enrolled on Census Day – the Monday after the first three weeks in a quarter. Since 16 percent of students on average drop out of courses after that date, the Brown administration is implying that the already underfunded colleges are getting money they don’t deserve.
A variety of analysts and researchers, including Nancy Shulock, director of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy at Sacramento State, have urged an end to funding based strictly on “seat time.” They favor results-based budgeting, which other states are trying, with incentives to colleges that increase course completion and transfer and graduation rates. A commission of chancellors and college presidents endorsed the concept last fall in 2020 Vision: A Report of the Commission on the Future of the Community College League of California.
But they envisioned this major shift in policy to be done thoughtfully and gradually, recognizing the need to build in factors that protect colleges serving the most disadvantaged students. Instead, it looks like an afterthought to rationalize a big budget cut.
A $400 million cut is the equivalent of not funding 350,000 students, according to the chancellor’s office. If forced to take it, the League and others will argue that the $110 million from higher fees should reduce the cut, to $290 million, not fund additional student growth. And the cut should be done as a “workforce reduction,” giving colleges latitude to protect and prioritize basic skills, transfer, and workforce training courses.
Simply cutting the budget, at a time when CSU and UC will be limiting enrollments and directing tens of thousands of students to community colleges, creates the false impression that they can continue to do more with less.
Clarification: According to data supplied by the chancellor’s office, a cut of $400 million “translates into approximately 400,000 students losing access to classes (200,000 students already in the system for which the colleges are receiving no state remuneration and roughly 200,000 additional students).” The $110 million generated by the additional $10 per unit fee increase would fund an additional 50,000 students, so the net number of students losing access would be 350,000.
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John writes: “Simply cutting the budget, at a time when CSU and UC will be limiting enrollments and directing tens of thousands of students to community colleges, creates the false impression that they can continue to do more with less.”
Accurate analysis John. Community college trustees must make unpleasant decisions this year about whether to reduce a percentage of all programs or to delete some local programs to allow others to thrive. Nearly all elected trustees serve as semi-volunteers, receiving just a few hundred dollars a month. As local representatives, we need to hear from the residents we serve. The 72 Districts are owned by the public and elected Trustees make decisions on behalf of our local constituents. Hello public. What choices do “you” want us to make?
As UC and CSU reduce enrollment, many thousands of qualified students will seek enrollment at Community Colleges rather than at four-year institutions. California’s decision makers have not funded the CCs at a level to allow CCs to continue to provide inexpensive enrichment classes and inexpensive core college education with small class sizes and inexpensive vocational training and inexpensive remedial coursework for students who aren’t ready for college work. Pick two categories to prioritize. Where should distance education fit in? And, how about substantially larger class sizes, similar to what students find at big four-year schools?
The 2020 Vision promoted by the League suggests that every Community College in California should aim to triple the number of completed certificates and completed Associates’ Degrees within ten years. To achieve those numbers, we have to focus. Our state’s population is growing. Available four-year public college spots are shrinking. Unless the voters surprise us with fresh sources of higher education funding, it’s time to make choices.
- Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley-Mission Community College District
State Board Member, California Community College Trustees (CCCT)
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I would have raised fees even higher. I don’t have a problem with having more than a two tiered fee system. But I think that is beyond the scope of what you are asking. But if there is anything you can do to encourage students who can afford to attend UC or CSU to attend those schools, I would support that. Next, I would sacrifice options to maintain core academic quality. And lastly, I would sacrifice remedial courses for college level courses.
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Given the ridiculously low transfer rates (20 to 40 percent, depending on who’s counting), perhaps it’s time to rethink whether the current community college system is worth retaining at all (gasp!).
CSU isn’t doing so well either, even if one extends the graduation timeline to 6 or 12 years.
If California opts to retain these institutions, it might make a lot of sense to create a common core curriculum for the first two undergraduate years that spans across all three segments. We needn’t go off the deep end like the K-12 system and create an absurd list of atomized state standards, but could assemble a common core framework that balances the need for diversity in coursework, the need to ensure a basic liberal arts underpinning for all undergraduates, and the need for a comprehensible credit transfer system. This common core needn’t be exactly the same for all campuses or majors, but could be a much-slimmed set of options with easy-to-understand transfer pathways.
This common core curriculum could also be linked to a common assessment system. Here too, we needn’t duplicate the mistakes of the K-12 system, but could build a reasonably robust system. These assessments could also vary across campuses and pathways to ensure diversity, but perhaps equated to some sort of scale give state and college/university officials as well as parents/students at least a crude grip on whether students are learning much at all. For an interesting, fresh perspective on the topic of whether students learn much in college, see this article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Ed: http://chronicle.com/article/New-Book-Lays-Failure-to-Learn/125983/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
At the same time, the funding system for the first two years of college (UC, CSU, CCC) should be opened-up to other potential providers, including school districts, charter schools, and private colleges/universities. Funding could be doled-out on the basis of successful completion of the first two years of common core courses–in lieu of the current enrollment and seat-time systems and their perverse incentives. Funding rates could be tweaked to provide additional funding for successful completion by students who entered with poor prior academic track records or other challenges.
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I don’t think that going to community college and not transferring to a four-year college should be viewed as a failure. That’s not the assumption on which community colleges were created.
Just to make one point, my son’s four-year college retails for $53,000 a year, counting room and board. The college application process is the Wild West, and for many who can’t cheerily hand out checks for $53,000 a year, it takes a considerable amount of savvy, determination and communications skill to secure adequate financial aid that doesn’t leave the student and/or family in crushing debt.
To make another, if education is valuable, doesn’t two years of college have value — or whatever quantity of eduction the student achieves?
Community colleges offer AA degrees in numerous practical fields that are valuable in themselves. It’s not right to brand the students who complete those AA degrees as failures because they didn’t find their way into a four-year college and get another degree.
By the way, I know a number of CSU students who are having to take an extra semester or two because cuts have made it impossible to get all the classes they need within the four-year period. And I’ve known many over the years who took longer than four years because they had to work during college.
When did those situations and the individuals in those situations become failures, and why is that?
Obviously some students blow off college and gain no benefit from it, but that happens at $53,000/year four-year colleges too.
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Oh, and as another point (obvious, but one that clearly needs to be made nonetheless), during the two years the student is spending (conceivably) $106,000 to attend college and complete the four-year degree, he/she is also out of the workforce and unable to earn a living.
It’s utterly out of touch with reality to view the inability to partake in that two-year commitment as a damning failure. We should applaud students who spend two years in college and get an AA degree (or even who don’t get that degree), not condemn them and their schools as failures.
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