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February 12, 2010

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SacBee: Community colleges rethink missions as budgets tighten

daniel-lee

The Sacramento Bee covers the changes that state funding cuts are driving in our community colleges across California.

At the board meeting that drew 500 people last week, trustees voted to send preliminary layoff notices to all instructors in those programs. They asked college administrators to come back with alternative cuts to close the school’s $11.2 million deficit so they might be able to save the vocational classes.

But no matter what they cut in the end, board members acknowledged the school won’t be able to serve everyone it always has.

"This…stinks because if you’re going to cut the budget of a community college by $10 million, you are going to be impacting the mission," said Trustee Scott Leslie.

…

The Legislature and the chancellor of the state’s community colleges recognize that budget cuts mean the schools will be paring back what they do and whom they serve, but they want schools to keep teaching job skills, remedial academics and classes that prepare students to transfer to a four-year university.

"Now is the time to eliminate courses that are primarily avocational," Chancellor Jack Scott said at a community college convention in November. "It is not our job to provide physical exercise for adults who don’t want to pay the fees to join an athletic club or provide a course for those who want to learn quilting."

Chavez, the Sierra College president, said he’s trying to follow that advice by teasing out who’s taking classes and for what reasons. He said he recently talked to a woman who was angry she couldn’t get into an Italian class. When he found out she wasn’t working on a degree at Sierra but wanted to take the class because she and her husband were planning a trip to Italy, he decided that keeping her out of the class was fair.

At the end of the day, the State Legislature is sending a message with their budget cuts, and I think it’s likely that the community colleges will by necessity become much more focused on two core areas: career and technical education that leads straight to jobs in the private sector; and general education for students fulfilling degree requirements or transferring to four year universities.

Photo Credit: SacBee

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  • Dan Lee

    I think you nailed it, community colleges duty will be twofold provide immediate jobs to the community and prepare for 4 yr transfers. Even though construction demand is down it will inevitably rise again in the future as the economy rebounds and and building starts again. I don't have any specific figures for Agriculture, but it's apparent that as long as we need to eat there will always be a need for food production. In Automotive business is bleak for new car dealerships but conversly it has caused a dramatic rise in demand for repair technicians as people are now keeping their used cars longer and needing more maintainance and repair. Scaling the programs back but not eliminating them outright is a smart choice as these services are inevtibly going to come into demand in the coming future and it will be possible to re-jump start the programs at that time. Unfortunately the classes on http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8466 probably won't make the cut.

  • Dan Lee

    btw if I knew this pic was gonna be put in the paper I would have shaved :-) lol

  • http://www.aaronklein.com aaronklein

    Ah, I think it worked out okay… :)

  • http://www.aaronklein.com aaronklein

    I don't think anyone disagrees with that. The issue with these three programs is that they happened to be the ones with a combination of declining enrollment, (relatively) high cost of delivery and job market problems at the time the downturn came.

    I think the debate the college is having right now is…how do we find the resources to push all 21 job training programs to high levels of quality and student success? Can we support 21 programs properly or are we dooming all 21 to not being able to support students the way they should by having so many?

    My hope is that each of the three programs recommended for closure are able to find a combination of cost reductions, refocus and streamlining, private sector financial support and dependable revenue streams, to allow them to continue, and that the board can find ways to support all 21. I don't have the data yet to determine if that's possible.

  • Dan Lee

    Thats a great point, theres a lot of anxiety with the students concerned with weither or not they can finish their degrees and certifications. (myself included) I've been getting dozens of emails from high school students wishing to attend as well as instructors interested in the program's future and they all want to do something to help. There have been some great ideas going around (some of which I put on the facebook group page) and a lot of energy from the students. Being the Auto Club president, it makes it my responsibility to help with this process in any way I can and in working with such dedicated instructors such as Steve Smith and Alex Wong I feel confident that we can creat a stronger and more focused program. I also think that even at it's present state this program already has accomplished a great deal for the community I just don't think anyone realized just how much until Feb 2nd's meeting when there was the threat of closure. I'm sure the other students/instructors in construction and agriculture feel the same and I think transperancy and cooperation will be a key to our success.

    One of the things I'd like to work on is tracking the success of each student who leaves the program. The difficulties with this type of program is that you can get enough job training with just one or two classes that doesn't necessarily translate to a dergree or certification but still accomplishes the mission of “career and technical education that leads straight to jobs in the private sector”. This is one thing to consider when evaluating a program soley on how many degrees or certs if generates per year or semester. I don't have any figures myself, but in that regard has there been any streamlining of the 19 other job training programs to compensate? (outside of the 5 percent pay reduction and increased furloughs of course)

  • Dan Lee

    Just realized even though I went through and proof read my post I left a glaringly obvious mathmatical error — 21-3 = 19???

    lol I meant the other “18″ job training programs :-D

  • http://www.aaronklein.com aaronklein

    These are all good points and I'm glad you're working on behalf of students as hard as you are.

    As for the other 18 programs, they all had varying levels of feedback in the recent program review process. Many of them are “single strand” programs that only have a single focus and thus are already very focused.

    The goal here is not to pit the 21 programs against each other. These 3 had the bad fortune to have a mix of issues — none of which are necessarily the fault of instructors or staff — that put them into the recommendation. That doesn't make them bad programs, but it does make them the focal point if the state funding cuts give us insufficient resources to handle 21 programs.

    All that to say, I think we're on the best track we can be, which is doing our best to reshape, refocus and find the resources to continue these 3 if at all possible. I'm hopeful we can have a good outcome.

  • http://www.aaronklein.com aaronklein

    No worries. And if you get a Disqus account, you can edit your comments after you post them. :)

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