Pierce Cites Progress Toward Resolving Campus Problems

Despite disappointing student enrollments and more looming budget deficits, Pierce College plans to report it has made “significant progress” toward solving those and other problems that have jeopardized the campus’ accreditation.

The troubled community college also will tout the recent hiring of its new president, its many marketing initiatives aimed at boosting enrollments and various cost-cutting measures in a status report to be submitted next week to the college’s accrediting agency.

“Pierce College has taken seriously the recommendations . . . and has made significant progress toward achieving them,” the college said in a draft of the report released Friday. “Not all the initiatives have reached the same level of completion, but that is to be expected . . . “

Yet the report also comes amid a double dose of bad news. Despite the big marketing push, new figures show the campus’ final enrollment this semester was flat, rising only 0.6% to 13,598 students. By a different measure used to calculate state funding, it actually fell 1.3%.

Pierce officials this week also circulated preliminary budget data that predicted a $3.1-million campus deficit for the 1996-97 school year. That would be substantially worse than the $1.4-million shortfall the campus had earlier predicted for the current school year.

The campus’ draft report to the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, a private group that oversees state schools granting two-year degrees, made no mention of the flat enrollment or budget deficit.

Citing nagging enrollment drops as well as financial and leadership problems on the campus, the commission last June delayed renewing Pierce’s accreditation until at least November 1997. The campus remains accredited in the meantime, but the delay was meant to serve as a warning that improvements were needed.

Among colleges, accreditation is a widely recognized seal-of-approval indicating that an institution has met minimum standards of academic quality. Pierce could not operate without accreditation because many of its graduates go on to a four-year university where that status is required.

The accrediting commission asked the college to submit a progress report by Wednesday on two critical issues cited in its review: the college’s repeated budget deficits and turnover in presidents.

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Pierce, which had an acting president during its 1995 review, received a permanent president in March. E. Bing Inocencio, an administrator at New York City Technical College in Brooklyn, visited the campus this week and is due to start in June.

On the financial side, the campus’ report cites many efforts to boost enrollment. Those include promotions in local movie theaters, new advertising and brochures, plans for a second summer session this year, and plans to expand a popular program for working adults in the fall.

The college, seeking new funding sources, also cites ongoing plans to develop a private golf driving range on campus and another plan to host a weekly “Farmers Market,” run with the help of agriculture students, on a five-acre parcel near De Soto Avenue and Victory Boulevard.

The campus hopes to close this year’s budget gap by freezing some vacant positions, putting off travel and new purchases, and replacing only 11 of 48 full-time faculty jobs lost through retirements.

In the Los Angeles Community College District, meanwhile, overall enrollment news also was not good. Total enrollment, which has fallen steeply in recent years, slid again to 95,723 students, down 0.3% from a year ago.

Pierce’s enrollment is down more than 10,000 from its all-time high.

The campuses posting the largest gains were Mission College in Sylmar with 5,844 students and West Los Angeles College with 7,418 students, each with 5% gains.

The other six campuses posted losses, including Valley College in Van Nuys, the district’s largest, which fell 1.3% to 15,063 students.