One of my favorite leaders in California is our Board of Equalization Member, Bill Leonard. Bill has a common sense outlook on our state’s fiscal situation, and I’ve yet to strongly disagree with any of his ideas.

In his weekly newsletter this morning, he just took on community college funding, and I couldn’t agree with him more. The mission of our community college system doesn’t match its funding — one or the other has to change!

I also had some feedback on community colleges this week and join my correspondents’ concerns about this backbone of our state’s education system.  The state requires community colleges to be open to all comers, and this is one of the best features of community colleges.  Everyone can walk in the door and begin taking classes to improve their skills, learn a trade, or work toward a degree.

However, the state does a disgraceful job of funding community colleges or making sure that students can transfer easily to a CSU or UC.  The state projects what enrollment growth will be at the community colleges and then gives them that amount of money, regardless of what actual enrollment is.  One community college I know of grew by 19% but only received funding for 3% growth.  Now, consider what is going to happen to community college enrollment since CSU and UC will be restricting their number of students because of budget problems.  Add to that the increase in new and returning students because of the economic decline, and we have a huge problem brewing.

CSU and UC have little incentive to take transfer units since the fewer units students transfer in with, the more they will pay in tuition to take the classes on their campuses.  While many community colleges coordinate transfer units with the closest CSU/UC, these agreements do not extend to campuses around the state.  Seems silly to me because calculus is calculus whether you take it in Rancho Cucamonga or San Diego.

Our community college system deserves much better than it gets.   We ask it to do tremendous work remediating students who did not understand high school topics, teaching English to immigrants, covering hobbies for seniors, enhancing learning for advanced high school students, training for careers like nursing, radiology, mechanics, etc.  We tell them they have to do this for anyone and everyone who applies, and the state is better off for it.  In these tough times when the community colleges will be asked to do even more, we should rethink how we prioritize high education funding and put more of a spotlight on our community college system.