Community colleges squeezed from both sides

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

When Deneece Huftalin looks out from her office, she sees signs that would be encouraging in normal economic times.

“There’s more parked cars in the parking lot,” said Huftalin, the vice president for student services at Salt Lake Community College in Salt Lake City, Utah. “There’s more lines in our advising office.”

The school’s enrollment hit 23,252 this term, up by 12.5 percent in just a year, mirroring gains at every other institution in the Utah community college system. But the boom isn’t necessarily good news, officials said: The state’s community colleges, like similar institutions across the country, have been swamped with more applications than they know what to do with.

Almost 1,200 community colleges serve more than 10 million students across the country, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, and they are at the uneasy intersection of two trend lines as the economic recession enters its 15th month.

Tough times are fueling eagerness among workers who have lost their jobs to upgrade their skills and résumés. At the same time, the recession is forcing traditional four-year colleges and universities to cut enrollments and sharply raise tuition, freezing out many would-be students who are themselves feeling the pinch of the recession.

That has the less-expensive community colleges struggling to absorb the load at a time when their own budgets are being hacked.

The economy “definitely hurts,” Huftalin said. Students are “feeling the pain in terms of the budget cuts and increased enrollments.”

‘A lot of people ... have been shut out’
The situation is similarly difficult for many other community colleges across the country: Demand for their classes is at a record high, rising by an average of 10 percent over the past year, the community college association said, but the funding isn’t there to meet it.

Community colleges are supposed to be open access — accepting all comers — but the association said that tens of thousands of students have been turned away and that hundreds of thousands more will likely shut out in the future.

In California, the San Diego Community College District alone estimated that the state’s funding crisis had forced it to deny admission to more than 7,000 students. At the same time, state community college administrators are reviewing a plan to cut up to 5 percent of the system’s classes, even as enrollment in the state’s 110 two-year institutions has grown by 10 percent in the past year.

“We are definitely feeling the pinch,” said Sunny Cooke, president of Grossmont College in El Cajon, where enrollment is at a record high. “We have a lot of people who have been shut out of the state’s university system, as well as people who have lost their job.”

At Allen Hancock College in Santa Maria, Calif., enrollment has grown by 11.3 percent in the past year, making class registration a full-contact sport, said José M. Ortiz, the college’s president.

“We have a lot of pressure, but we don’t have funding,” Ortiz said. “Right now, our strategy has been to tell students to come early, register as soon as possible so they can get the classes that they need.”

An msnbc.com-NBC News special report Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. The following NBC stations contributed to this report: KNSD of San Diego; KOAA of Colorado Springs, Colo.; KSBY of San Luis Obispo, Calif.; KSL of Salt Lake City, Utah; WAFF of Huntsville, Ala.; WBOY of Clarksburg, W.Va.; WLBT of Jackson, Miss.; WNDU of South Bend, Ind.; WSAV of Savannah, Ga.; WVIR of Charlottesville, Va.; and WYFF of Greenville, S.C.

Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, Colo., has been under a hiring and travel freeze since October, and administrators have slashed the professional development budget.

President Tony Kinkel said the college was in a “horrible paradox,” because enrollment is up by 16 percent over a year ago and demand is rising, but the state is reducing funding.

At Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Va., meanwhile, the budget was cut by 15 percent this year, even though enrollment has risen by 17 percent since 2006.

“These budget cuts are occurring at what is, for us, the worst possible time,” said Frank Friedman, the college’s president. “We are trying not to raise class sizes. We are trying not to curtail class offerings. It is becoming more and more difficult.”

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