Educational Workhorse

California’s 106 community colleges won a much needed and deserved $451-million budget increase from Gov. Gray Davis on Monday. Since legislators shaved $282 million from their annual budget during the 1992 recession, the schools have managed to do more with less, educating three-quarters of all higher education students in the state at one-fifth the budget of the University of California and reaching out to a student body far more diverse than, say, UC Berkeley’s. For example, Los Angeles’ community colleges alone educate three times more African Americans and two times more Latinos than all nine UC campuses combined. And it is the community colleges that will be hit with the largest surge of “Tidal Wave 2,” a 36% enrollment increase expected over the next decade as more children of baby boomers reach college age.

To ensure that the money is spent well, legislators should see that the community colleges sharpen the instruments they now use to assess the relevancy and quality of their courses. Last year, community college faculties rightly rejected one proposed accountability measure, which would have given bonuses to the community colleges with the highest rates of student transfers to the UC and California State University systems.

That proposal was cheered by campuses like Los Angeles’ Pierce College and Santa Monica College, which have among the highest university transfer rates in the state, in part because they educate students whose parents attended universities. The proposal died, however, after community college faculty members pointed out that it would have penalized colleges like Los Angeles Trade Tech, where 98% of students have parents who never attended college.

Davis’ revised budget sensibly requires community college districts to adopt sophisticated accountability measures that take into account not only a college’s success at university transfers but also job placements and student retention rates.

Still, legislators should press Davis to improve upon the budget by granting community colleges funding increases if they boost student enrollment by up to 5%. Davis’ budget grants such an increase to the University of California system but inexplicably denies it to the needier community colleges.

Davis should also change outdated state funding formulas that reward colleges that offer low-cost courses like physical education instead of high-cost courses like nursing and computer science. For instance, while legislative studies estimate that California will need an additional 43,000 registered nurses in the next decade, community colleges are turning prospective nursing students away in droves. In 1998, 200 fully qualified students were rejected at Long Beach City College, 150 at Los Angeles Valley College and 200 at Los Angeles Pierce College.

There are plenty of fair accountability measures that Davis could ask the community college leadership to implement immediately. One example: Funding could be increased for the offices responsible for assessing whether district courses are meeting student needs and demands. Most of these offices, present in every community college district, receive scant funding.

Many college districts that have long opposed accountability measures should realize their self-interest in reform. Last week, the Los Angeles Community College District approved efforts to put a community college bond measure on next year’s ballot to raise money for brick-and-mortar projects like modernizing buildings so they meet seismic safety standards. The trustees will have a far easier time selling voters on the measure if colleges can provide assurance that they will spend wisely.