Community college funding is a life and death issue

(Bladen Journal, Elizabethtown, May 15, 2007)

Ann Russell, contributed

Editor’s Note: This column was contributed by Ann Russell, president of NCCCFA and Director of Distance Education Bladen Community College.

Verna, a divorced mother of two young teens, worked at the Gerber sewing plant in Lumberton for 15 years. She supported her children, even buying a small home. Then, the plant closed.

Within 6 months, Verna and her children were living in a rented mobile home in a bad location using food stamps to eat. Verna nearly suffered a mental breakdown from the stress.

Then, through the Job Link Center at a community college, Verna returned to school. She found help with school expenses, with learning algebra after 20 years out of school, and with re-inventing her life.

Today, Verna is weeks away from becoming a registered nurse, joining close to 2,000 new nurses likely to graduate from North Carolina's community college programs this year. She will graduate from the third community college she has attended in her 3-year odyssey toward returning to self-sufficiency. As a healthcare worker, she will also never worry about unemployment again.

In North Carolina, tens of thousands of Vernas are changing their lives at community colleges. In 2006, over 800,000 North Carolinians took classes. The truth is, in North Carolina, we can’t live without our community college graduates.

Why can’t we live without them?

Well, if you call 911 in an emergency you have a nearly 90 percent chance of the responder’s being a community college graduate, no matter if the emergency is fire, police, or medical.

If you seek a professional carpenter, plumber, heating and air conditioning specialist, or real estate agent, you will likely deal with a community college graduate.

If you have your hair done or get a manicure or a massage, chances are the work will be performed by a community college graduate.

If you need to have an x-ray, or have your teeth cleaned, or sell your house, another set of community college graduates could serve you. Last year, our colleges graduated more than 400 students from radiology programs, more than 500 from dental hygiene and assisting and more than 340 from paralegal programs.

If you need a landscaper or lawn maintenance, you got it: community colleges train the workers.

If a thunderstorm knocks out power, the “man in the bucket” who gets the power back on was, almost certainly, trained at a community college.

If you are one of the millions who commute on paved highways to work, then thank the heavy equipment operators trained at our community colleges.

If you have a favorite chef, or entrust your children to a certified childcare professional, community colleges are their chief place for training.

If you need an affordable, quality option for your first two years of college on the way to a four-year degree, a community college is the answer. Last year, more than 2,300 community college graduates transferred into the University System, and many private universities and colleges welcomed our graduates, too. Your judge, doctor, teacher, dentist or legislator may well have begun his or her education at a community college.

If you dropped out of high school, a community college will help you earn a high school diploma. Our Adult High School and GED programs graduate about 16,000 students a year — that's about 17 percent of all high school graduations in North Carolina — one in six.

And finally, when you pass on, the mortician, the funeral director, and the grave digger likely were trained at a community college. Heck, now that I think about it, you can’t even die in North Carolina without the community colleges.

And these amazing institutions have done all this for decades with woefully inadequate funding. But now, we have a crisis.

Recent economic events in North Carolina such as the loss of textile-industry jobs, of furniture-industry jobs, and tobacco-industry jobs have increased the demands on the community colleges. The call to teach more and more high school students and prisoners and other groups who pay no tuition is taxing limited resources. Faculty salaries are inadequate for recruiting top professionals to train workers. Funding for high costs associated with healthcare training is inadequate.

Technology and equipment needs are skyrocketing, but funding is NOT increasing. It is only a matter of time until services have to stop meeting demand.

Who will lose? Our entire state economy will suffer if the community colleges cannot meet the work force-training needs of the state. The Vernas won’t get to retrain and start new careers; new industries will look elsewhere for sites, and our calls to 911 just might go unanswered.

Last Thursday, the NC House of Representatives rolled out their 2007-2009 budget. It defies comprehension. It recommends a tuition increase that will go straight to the state’s general fund, not back to the schools. It cuts funding for bringing faculty salaries to mandated minimums — minimums mandated by the legislature. These two items net an $8.7 million dollar loss for the community colleges.

Oddly, the same budget offers no increase in financial aid to community colleges, but offers $8.7 million in tuition assistance to private colleges. The list of “not-fundeds” is too long for the paper, but it is scary.

Anyone who has ever benefited from a community college needs to contact our elected officials asking them to reconsider the woefully inadequate funding recommended for our community colleges.