Magic Words for Colleges

The first thing that the state’s new community college chancellor should do is visit the University of California and California State University headquarters to learn the magic words that they spoke to the governor to get more state money.

Joshua L. Smith, whose appointment was announced late last month, probably already knows some of the magic words. When he became president of the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City, Smith took over a debt- ridden institution that by 1982 had a new $126-million campus and a climbing enrollment. The system that Smith will head in California has faced both severe budget cuts and declining enrollments since Proposition 13 was approved in 1978. But, with 1.1 million students, it remains the nation’s largest, and should be the nation’s best. It is not.

Gov. George Deukmejian has reversed the downward spending trend for the UC and Cal State systems, but community colleges, the other third of the higher-education triad, have not fared as well. Common sense dictates that all elements of the system must be on a firm footing if the state is to prosper and to educate a wide range of students. But neither the governor nor the Legislature seems to consider community colleges prestigious enough to merit the attention that they deserve. Prestige is not the point, so correcting that view will be another of Smith’s missions.

Part of the problem is that the state still finances, and in a very real sense considers, the community colleges as an extension of its kindergarten-through-12th grade system. While UC and the Cal State system operate on budgets that consider the cost of their programs, the community colleges, like public schools, receive state money on the basis of average daily attendance. When attendance goes down, money goes down, courses get cut and attendance goes down again, and on and on. That cycle can be broken only by changing the state-aid formula. That will be another of Smith’s challenges.

Community colleges provide both a starting point for a college career and self-contained programs for occupational training. Both are important elements of the colleges’ programs; both need improvement, because too few students transfer to four-year institutions and too few of the occupational courses prepare students for jobs. Smith need not spend all his time contemplating the colleges’ mission to learn that; where he can spend his time is getting the money and the people to make the system work the way it should.