Community Colleges : CHANCE FOR A BETTER LIFE : A State-Regulated Monster Built From Good Intentions : Community colleges are drowning in rules and laws. To save them, free them from regulatory bondage.

In the state of California, it is illegal for any community college to call its senior police officer “Captain,” to require its senior business officer to meet the minimum requirements to be a teacher or to construct buildings funded by local taxes or bonds unless the state first approves all details; meanwhile, if a college class meets for 50 or 60 minutes, it shall be declared to have met for one hour, but any class meeting for 65 minutes is declared to have met for 1.3 hours.

These regulations cover only .02% of the more than 1,200 legislative statutes and 640 Board of Governors’ regulations that have put a stranglehold around the community college system. In a time of tightening budgets, the combination may sink a system renowned for offering all of the state’s high-school graduates a chance to better themselves and for providing the state’s better-paying employers with a pool of skilled employees.

Lest I be accused of exaggeration, here are a few comparisons: In Oregon, community colleges labor under 200 state regulations; New Jersey has 175; Texas has 110; New York has 50; Ohio has 35.

To be fair, each California statute at the time of its enactment seemed rational and justified to at least one lobbyist or legislator. Consider this fractional listing: Miller-Unruh Basic Reading Act; A Master Plan for Higher Education; Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS); The Rehabilitation Act; Student Records; Education Employment Relation Act (collective bargaining); Disabled Student Programs and Services; Investigating Complaints of Unlawful Discrimination; Affirmative Action; Matriculation. Plus endless laws and regulations about instructor qualifications, contracting rules, evaluation rules, student transfers--the list seems endless.

The community college system was planned to be just the opposite of this state-regulated monster. California’s first constitutional planners ordered local schools to be controlled by community panels of elected citizens--school boards--and gave these citizens the authority to impose local taxes to fund their schools. This resulted in California building and sustaining one of the nation’s finest school systems.

It was only after World War II, when California was witnessing double-digit population growth, that the state legislators simply couldn’t resist doing what they do best--responding to special interests.

The loss of local control was gradual, but the capstone was the destruction of the funding mechanism that financed local schools. The late Howard Jarvis and his property tax freeze, Proposition 13, destroyed the ability of California schools and community colleges to raise local revenues by way of property taxes.

The state legislators, rather than giving local schools new revenue options, told public educators not to worry, the state would accept full responsibility for funding schools and community colleges from its general fund.

So, K-12 schools and community colleges were “saved” from Proposition 13, but found themselves under the minute rule of Sacramento.

Now the state is short of money as well, forcing deep cutbacks and steep fee increases in public higher education, with no reduction in the costly, legalistic maze of regulation.

So, what can be done?

One possible path, taking a cue from the lower grades, would be for the legislators to create Charter Community Colleges. This would permit any local community college, if a specified percentage of teachers and the local community college board agreed, to waive most state regulations but continue to receive public funding for up to five years. Additional five-year renewals would depend on whether all parties--the teachers, the state and the local community college board--approved of the college’s performance.

Or, the state could issue vouchers for adults to attend either public or private colleges. If California adults were issued vouchers worth, say, half the annual cost of tuition charged by the University of California, to be applied at any public or private college, the guaranteed government subsidy currently enjoyed by all public higher education would be threatened. Perhaps then the public colleges would demand emancipation from state rules; the newfound competition might even produce lower operating costs and more learning.

Less drastically, the framework of existing state law could remain but be simplified. This could be accomplished at a constitutional convention for community colleges.

However, simple reform might be more difficult to accomplish than a complete revamping because of the power of vested interests--unions, special interest groups of teachers, administrators, contractors and so on--and their fear of change. It would be akin to President Clinton’s asking the senior members of Congress to meet for a weekend and return with major cuts in the enacted legislative entitlements of the past decade.

The certain thing is that community colleges desperately need to escape the micro-management of Sacramento. If we do nothing, the demise of effective public community colleges is assured. As you read this article, our legislators and the lobbyists of Sacramento are working hard at what they do best, writing new laws.