With more than 47,000 full-time students attending 13 two-year colleges across the state, the Colorado Community College System is a vital cog in the state’s higher education system and economic engine. Yet as a systemwide reform effort sweeps over the campuses, there’s a growing feeling that the system is operating more like a business – or worse, a political machine – and less like 13 institutions of higher learning.
The mysterious resignation of Front Range Community College president Janet Gullickson in July, and the quick choice of one of Gov. Bill Owens’ appointees as her replacement, only stoked the speculation. Academic tradition is to be as free as possible from political entanglements, and appointments that appear political in nature spark campus concerns that the governor will want to increase his sway over college operations or policies.
Nancy McCallin, president of the system for the past 10 months and a former Owens aide herself, says that in many ways it is a business, and needs to operate differently. And she notes that more than two years ago, with reports of thousands of taxpayer dollars being spent on lavish holiday parties for system administrators, state lawmakers were feeling uneasy about the community college system, believing it had run amok.
So if educators see politics in the reform effort, they’re right. That’s where it began.
Much of what McCallin is doing is dictated by a state law approved in 2004, when Republicans controlled the legislature. The bill requires that officials reduce administrative costs, restructure learning programs, centralize information technology, and create a vision for developing the Lowry campus, where the system is headquartered.
McCallin already has slashed 22 percent from administrative costs and then put that $2.6 million into centralizing the information system. “The system operated as 13 separate institutions,” McCallin said. “They would do financial aid 13 different ways.”
If education leaders truly want to solve what’s been dubbed the Colorado paradox – the fact we have one of the nation’s most educated populations yet do one of the worst jobs sending our own kids to college – then the state needs an efficient and affordable community college system. If that means consolidating administrative duties, or streamlining the financial aid process so it’s not done 13 ways, so be it.
Over the past two years enrollment has grown 17 percent at the state’s community colleges, as tuition skyrockets at four-year schools and as some in the workforce seek to retrain themselves. Nearly 30 percent of the students at the 13 schools are ethnic minorities, a group woefully under-represented in higher education.
Community colleges serve a unique role. As long as reform is geared toward helping students and making college more accessible, it will be welcome.
