One of the central themes of this year’s League of Innovations conference was the need to soldier on despite a lack of funding. That theme reflects the clear-eyed view of some community college leaders who are not intimidated by increasing state divestment and increasing pressure on community colleges to be all things to all people.
“We seem to be at a rate of change that is accelerated and with what seems to be an increased number of expectations to be met by community colleges,” Dr. Gerardo E. de los Santos, president and CEO of the League of Innovations, said. “In just recent years, community colleges have been put under the spotlight, and it’s a wonderful thing. But at the same time, that spotlight brings about things that perhaps weren’t there before.”
Increasingly, community colleges are being positioned as “saviors of the middle class” or “economic job engines” of their respective regions.
Yet as recent developments in states like Arizona show, some community colleges are receiving limited outside help to achieve the lofty ambitions being heaped upon them. While many investments by states have dwindled from covering a third of colleges’ budgets in decades past to less than 10 percent today, the governor of Arizona and the state Legislature made the unprecedented step of announcing that they would reduce state funding to the state’s largest community college systems—Maricopa and Pima—to zero, in early March.
“That’s not a new story. That’s been decreasing for decades,” de los Santos said of the situation in Arizona. “It was only a matter of time before we went from that one percent to zero, or pretty close to it, I should say.”
Though the blow may have been inevitable, it still hurts.
“When you take that kind of blow to your budget, that’s got to be difficult. Hopefully they’ll be able to find a way to effectively address those funds they’re no longer getting. That’s very unfortunate,” said Dr. Edward J. Leach, director of NISOD.
