Warning on the Colleges

Joshua Smith’s resignation as the chancellor of the California community colleges is a high price to pay for the state’s failure to repair a glaring flaw in the way it governs the largest post-secondary eduction system in the world. His departure is a warning that the Legislature must not ignore.

Smith is leaving in frustration over a law that fails to grant to the chancellor the power to do his job as the chief of California’s 106 community colleges, a network that serves more than 1 million students. Virtually incapable of exerting any influence on the local level, the chancellor is reduced to administrator and bureaucrat. That was not enough for a man of Smith’s caliber and sense of excellence. His departure is a loss for the state.

Ironically, he will leave just as the Legislature faces up to improving the college system: Two statewide advisory boards have submitted important, and conflicting, reform proposals. The Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of the Master Plan would not go far enough to strengthen the authority of the chancellor and the community colleges’ board of governors. An independent Master Plan Review Commission is more on target, suggesting a more powerful team in Sacramento to reach the goal on which both agree--restoring academic excellence to the colleges. California’s community colleges lack the strong, cohesive, centralized system that governs the University of California and the California State University system. True, community colleges are unique in their number, diversity and responsiveness to their locales. But both committees advocate elevating the colleges to parallel status with California’s two university systems. And it will be hard to better coordinate the college network without strong guidance from the board of governors. It will be even more difficult to recruit a candidate as qualified as Smith to the chancellorship if his office continues to lack substance. And the colleges certainly need a skillful leader in Sacramento.

Some see the centralization and concentration of the community colleges’ governance as the end of local supervision of what is in essence a local institution. That is an extreme view that unfortunately turns state and local boards of trustees into adversaries when they have so much to gain from close cooperation. The proposals of the review commission provide for ample sharing of power between state and local levels. And increased state supervision will probably help to reinvigorate the curriculum designed to prepare community-college students for transfer to a state university campus. In recent years the role of community colleges as a springboard to a four-year degree has deteriorated.

The board of governors and the chancellor also have politics to thank for the lack of a full grant of authority. The Legislature talks about sharing power publicly, but some members are privately reluctant to surrender the control over community colleges that the Legislature inherited as a result of Proposition 13. Also there are doubts about the Deukmejian Administration’s long-term commitment to community colleges.

But the Legislature can find other ways to make certain that its goals are met. It certainly should not let short-term politics stand in the way ofthe long-term health of California’s community colleges. With a resolute stance on a strong board of governors, the Legislature can help sustain the excellence of California’s system of public higher education.