Grab the Bargain, Gov. Davis

Community colleges are the state’s best, least expensive hope for educating Californians and meeting future labor needs. These underappreciated educational workhorses are adept at retraining workers dumped by cost-cutting corporations and bolstering such understaffed professions as nursing. They also let secondary students take courses their high schools don’t teach, expose people of all ages to college-level history, philosophy and biology and ease overcrowding in four-year universities by prepping students to attend Cal State or the University of California. (Six of 10 Cal State students and three of 10 UC students come from community colleges.)

In October, community college leaders wrung an extra $32 million from the state for the 1.7 million students attending classes on 108 campuses statewide. Given the scarcity of cash in Sacramento, they now fret that Gov. Gray Davis will chop their budget faster and harder than the University of California’s or California State University’s--as shortsighted leaders did during the last recession.

As it is, colleges get just $4,700 a student each year. That’s less than the national average for two-year colleges ($6,700) and a drop in the bucket compared with Cal State ($11,000) and the University of California ($25,000).

Here are a few political risks that Davis should take to protect the community colleges.

* Trim funding for the new University of California campus near Merced, at $160 million the highest-cost, lowest-return project in California higher education today. It will accommodate only 1,000 students by 2004, but to pare its budget Davis will have to face down the powerful UC lobby.

* Raise community college tuition. The colleges’ fee of $11 per unit, the lowest in the nation, could be increased moderately and offset for needy students through financial aid--most of which could come from the federal government at no cost to California’s treasury.

* Require colleges to compete for additional state money through grant-like applications, in which each school demonstrates its ability to train workers for the jobs that employers need to fill in high-demand fields--from biotechnology to hazardous waste disposal.

Community colleges are a bargain, governor. Particularly in a shaky economy.