State Chancellor of Community Colleges to Quit

Frustrated by bureaucratic obstacles that “make it impossible to accomplish anything,” California Community Colleges Chancellor Joshua Smith, who was hired two years ago to resuscitate the state’s struggling system of two-year colleges, said Wednesday that he will resign before the end of the year.

Smith, 52, said in a telephone interview from Sacramento that he has accepted the presidency of a community college in New Jersey. He plans to assume his duties there no later than Dec. 15.

The Harvard-educated chancellor said he is looking forward to going to New Jersey, where he “can be an educator again instead of a state bureaucrat.”

New Salary Higher

According to a statement released by the Board of Trustees of Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J., Smith was chosen as the fourth president of the 21-year-old campus at the board’s meeting Wednesday night. The board agreed to pay him $88,000 for the first year of a three-year contract. He has been paid $84,000 in his California post.

Gordon N. Litwin, chairman of the Brookdale board, called Smith “a nationally recognized leader in community college education” and said the school was “honored by his acceptance” of the presidency. Smith will be the first black president of the college, which has about 35,000 students and is located in a largely affluent suburban area about 25 miles south of New York City.

Smith came to California from New York, where he helped turn around a Manhattan community college that was suffering from a loss of students and financing--problems that were acute in some California districts, notably Los Angeles. During his eight years as president of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the college enrollment grew substantially, according to Brookdale officials. Smith recently served on a blue-ribbon panel appointed by New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean that recommended changes in New Jersey community colleges.

In California, Smith pressed for a major overhaul of the state’s public two-year colleges, a loosely knit system of 106 campuses divided into 70 districts, each with its own locally elected governing board. He advocated strengthening the office of the chancellor and granting greater autonomy to the statewide board of governors, which does not wield the same degree of authority as the University of California Board of Regents or the California State University Board of Trustees.

Smith was able to win a substantial increase in community college financing from Gov. George Deukmejian this year, which he cited as a major accomplishment. Nonetheless, Smith said, he was doubtful that he could persuade the governor and the Legislature to give him the freedom he needs to make substantial changes in the way the system operates.

A state commission that recently finished a review of the state Master Plan for Higher Education recommended a series of reforms that would strengthen the roles of the chancellor and the Board of Governors, and would steer more students and more money to the community colleges. The recommendations have been well received in the Legislature, but the reforms would be costly and the realities of state finance and politics make it far from certain that the necessary money will be approved by Deukmejian.

Underscores Problem

Smith’s decision to leave underscores the need to resolve the problem of who should govern the community colleges, observers knowledgeable about the state’s higher education systems said.

William Pickens, executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which monitors the community colleges, the University of California and the California State University system, called Smith a “dynamic and intelligent leader” who was able to draw attention to the difficulty of governing the community college system. A central problem is that power to set policy rests largely with the 70 local boards, but since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, the colleges are dependent on the state for the bulk of their financing.

“His real contribution,” Pickens said, “was to call attention to the fact that . . . most of the power was vested in Sacramento, especially in the Legislature with regard to funding and lots of regulations, and yet the governance system was very decentralized.”

Lacked Salary Control

For instance, unlike the UC and CSU systems, the community college system is subject to civil service regulations, which meant that Smith had no control over a matter as mundane as setting the salaries of his staff members. The community college Board of Governors lacked the authority to set Smith’s salary. Smith had not received a raise since he was hired in 1985, and is paid less than the chancellors of the largest local districts.

George David Kieffer, immediate past president of the Board of Governors, said Smith’s job was “the toughest education job” in the state. “You get blamed for the bad things,” he said, “and you don’t have the authority to solve the problems.”

Jonnah Laroche, a faculty member on the statewide board, said Smith was widely respected by faculty groups and called his decision to leave “a loss to community college education” in California.