Jan. 16, 2006

The Abandonment of Community Colleges

For at least a decade now, leaders of flagship state universities have been talking about the rapid decline in the state share of their budgets — a decline viewed by many as both historic and unfortunate.

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In 1980-81, 16 states contributed at least 60 percent of the budgets of their community colleges. By 2000-1, none did so.
In 1980-81, 22 states contributed at least half of the budgets for their community colleges, which enrolled 55 percent of all community college students in the country. By 2000-1, only 7 states — enrolling 8 percent of community college students — did so.
During the 20 years for which data were studied, community colleges saw a sharp increase in the share of their budgets that comes from contracts. While many projects supported by those contracts helped the institutions and their communities, experts on community college finance note that the sources of funds that make up a decreasing share of college budgets tend to support instruction, and that the contracts are unlikely to make up the difference.

All of these findings are in a doctoral dissertation that Billy Roessler defended last month at the University of North Texas. Roessler, registrar at the Tarrant County College South Campus, had a dissertation committee that included some of the top experts on community college finance — people who say that this data should make people pay more attention to the financial challenges facing community colleges.

“It’s totally depressing,” said Stephen G. Katsinas, director of the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. “Everyone is hurting and all the government support has been going down. If you had local support, the states cut you more because they knew that they could.”

Roessler said that he fears the data point to a challenge to community colleges’ historic mission of open access. “We’re clearly having students pay more, and that undermines their ability to enroll,” he said.

For his study, Roessler used a classification system Katsinas developed to examine community colleges by their geographic area (urban, suburban, rural). While the trends were generally the same in the three categories, there were significant differences in magnitude. (The percentages shown do not add to 100 percent because numerous small categories have been excluded here.)

Share of Community College Budgets by Source of Funds

Source of Funds	1981	2001
Rural
—State appropriations	48.1%	37.3%
—Local appropriations	15.6%	11.8%
—Tuition and fees	14.2%	18.2%
—Contracts	9.4%	22.2%
Suburban
—State appropriations	45.4%	31.8%
—Local appropriations	20.3%	20.4%
—Tuition and fees	17.1%	20.9%
—Contracts	7.1%	16.2%
Urban
—State appropriations	47.0%	31.8%
—Local appropriations	17.4%	13.8%
—Tuition and fees	16.0%	19.1%
—Contracts	9.3%	26.9%

Roessler said that the only good news in this data was that suburban community colleges had been able to maintain the same percentage of local support — something he speculated was due to the fast growth in those areas.

When he started the study, Roessler said, he expected to find a decline in the share of government support in community college budgets during the time period he examined. “I was anticipating a dropoff. The surprise was how large,” he said.

Katsinas said that this analysis was significant because these trends can easily be hidden by annual reports on increases in state appropriations for various colleges. He also said that the rise in contract funds had many implications. Community colleges are increasingly dependent, he said, on programs that may not relate directly to student instruction.

“Creating economic development programs is the big unfunded mandate,” he said.

Katsinas said that the trends since 2001 — years of tight state budgets until last year — have almost certainly exacerbated the trends the study found.

For 45 states, Roessler was able to obtain enough data to show the percentage of community college budgets that came from the states and from local governments in 1981 and 2001. (Complete, comparable data were not available for Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota.) Those figures follow.

Average Share of Community College Budgets From Appropriations

State	State Funds 1981	State Funds 2001	Local Funds 1981	Local Funds 2001
Alabama	60.6%	43.3%	0.9%	0.5%
Arizona	22.1%	15.2%	42.6%	39.1%
Arkansas	58.5%	55.1%	0.0%	0.0%
California	60.3%	32.9%	19.6%	20.3%
Colorado	40.7%	32.5%	7.7%	9.5%
Connecticut	67.3%	59.3%	0.0%	0.0%
Delaware	75.6%	56.3%	0.0%	0.0%
Florida	60.4%	47.5%	0.0%	0.0%
Georgia	57.6%	50.1%	0.0%	0.0%
Idaho	47.1%	30.1%	16.9%	13.1%
Illinois	27.1%	15.9%	32.1%	29.8%
Indiana	43.5%	40.1%	0.0%	0.0%
Iowa	41.0%	29.8%	8.3%	6.8%
Kansas	26.1%	22.5%	38.7%	34.3%
Maine	65.9%	49.6%	0.9%	0.0%
Maryland	34.3%	26.7%	26.3%	22.2%
Massachusetts	60.2%	52.6%	0.4%	0.0%
Michigan	35.2%	25.7%	22.4%	23.6%
Minnesota	49.4%	44.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Mississippi	47.4%	39.4%	12.1%	7.6%
Missouri	36.2%	29.0%	22.4%	19.3%
Montana	42.6%	25.7%	26.4%	19.4%
Nebraska	32.5%	44.5%	35.0%	9.7%
Nevada	65.6%	58.9%	0.0%	0.0%
New Hampshire	65.5%	40.1%	0.0%	0.0%
New Jersey	26.3%	19.1%	28.3%	23.4%
New Mexico	32.6%	32.9%	34.1%	23.4%
New York	36.3%	24.9%	22.4%	14.8%
North Carolina	69.1%	46.9%	10.2%	10.1%
North Dakota	47.1%	39.4%	3.5%	0.0%
Ohio	42.4%	37.1%	11.6%	9.9%
Oklahoma	61.5%	44.4%	5.1%	11.2%
Oregon	28.4%	31.2%	33.6%	14.8%
Pennsylvania	27.9%	26.5%	21.9%	16.2%
Rhode Island	69.3%	47.8%	0.0%	0.0%
South Carolina	51.7%	39.7%	7.1%	8.4%
Tennessee	64.2%	49.2%	0.0%	0.0%
Texas	50.8%	37.3%	13.3%	15.4%
Utah	54.0%	42.0%	0.0%	0.0%
Vermont	44.6%	10.9%	0.0%	0.0%
Virginia	69.7%	53.3%	0.0%	0.3%
Washington	67.6%	39.7%	0.1%	0.0%
West Virginia	70.9%	45.7%	0.0%	0.0%
Wisconsin	21.7%	17.8%	49.1%	45.6%
Wyoming	51.5%	39.7%	22.9%	17.0%

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

Good work

Good work by the scholar who identified an important problem and assembled meaningful information. Good work by the reporter who found out about it.

Alison P. Martinez, at 10:29 am EST on January 16, 2006

state support for community colleges disappearing...

Why no data from Kentucky?

Kentucky’s community college system was admistered by the Univerity of Kentucky from roughly 1966 through 1998. There should be a clear and evident paper trail of the funding utilized during that period. After 1998, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System was legislated to consolidate community and technical education throughout the commonwealth of Kentucky. Again, records for state appropriated monies should be evident. In fact, concerns about funding duplicate programs were part of the decision used to mandate consolidation— records for the time period of 1981-2001 should be easily accessed through the Legislative Research Commission of Kentucky state government.

one of the worker bees..., at 12:21 pm EST on January 16, 2006

question

What are the contracts for, exactly?

p, at 5:37 pm EST on January 16, 2006

I would think that the contracts are for contract training and other workforce/economic development related activities. This is occuring at state universities as well.

frank sabatine, Associate Provost at Ball State University, at 7:41 pm EST on January 16, 2006

What about 4 year college impacts?

During roughly that period (late 70s up to the present), the percent of the adult population having at least a 4 year degree has doubled.

Has a drop in community college support been coupled with an increase in support to 4 year colleges? (In other words, does one come at the expense of the other — after all, resources are finite.)

How does this stack up if measured in terms of support per student rather than per college? Are there simply a lot more students today? (Census data says there are a LOT more college students today — its been a straight line climb since the 60s.)

Edward, at 5:09 pm EST on January 19, 2006

Implications for per student funding

Population growth and costs of four year universities are just some of the factors contributing to the increasing number of community college students across the US. This growth, coupled with decreases in state appropriations, make for a significant decrease in the amount of funds provided to schools for each student.

carol henrichs, Dir of Distance Education at The Victoria College, at 3:25 pm EDT on May 28, 2006

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The Abandonment of Community Colleges

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Comments

Good work

state support for community colleges disappearing...

question

What about 4 year college impacts?

Implications for per student funding

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