December 02, 2008 10:54 am
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Phil Riddle
editor@weatherforddemocrat.com
Texas’ 50 community colleges have become the state’s primary workforce training grounds.
And as such, they hope to see an increase in funding from the Legislature when lawmakers return to session in January.
Legislators will return to work tenuously sitting on a projected $10 billion surplus, and community colleges are already in line to claim a portion.
“We certainly are going to be in that line,” said Weatherford College President Joe Birmingham. “The reason is simple. Texas is growing, especially in the metropolitan areas, and we need more funding to hire faculty and staff to admit and teach a growing student population.”
According to the Texas Association of Community Colleges, seven of 10 Texans who seek higher education start at a two-year school.
“That shows how significant community colleges are,” he said. “They are affordable and accessible.”
Birmingham said he hopes the 81st session of the Texas Legislature will do something to reverse a funding trend that has seen state appropriations drop from about 65 percent of community colleges’ budgets in the mid 1980s to slightly above 31 percent currently.
“Funding has not kept pace the last 25 years,” he said. “It has dramatically changed.”
State Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) also hopes community college funding can be upped when he and his colleagues convene in January, but is concerned over the competition for surplus dollars.
“I’ve been a long-time supporter of community colleges, Weatherford College specifically,” he said. “I went there myself and my kids have all, at one time or another, gone to classes there.”
However, King reports, Texas public schools are probably going to need an infusion of billions of dollars and reparations from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, along with replacing money already used from the state’s emergency fund for those disasters, significantly draws down the anticipated surplus.
“Add to that,” King said, “we still need to see the fourth-quarter sales tax receipts. I think retail sales will be fine, but if fourth-quarter receipts dip, it will reduce the surplus.”
King added another area of concern is corporate tax receipts. He said the tax, which was used to buy down property taxes in the last session, could be down as much as 30 percent.
“If it fails to produce — and some have said it could fall from $6 billion in revenue to $4 billion — we’ll have to make that money up from the surplus.”
On a positive note, King said there is a statewide push to reduce the cost of getting a college education.
“There’s no better way to do that than through our community colleges,” he said. “In my opinion, Texas will be better off, rather than pouring money in universities, to put it where we can get the most bang for the buck, and that’s in our community colleges.”
Birmingham said Weatherford College enrollment numbers have grown by 6 percent in the last two years. Two-thirds of the student body at Weatherford College is working on core courses to transfer to a four-year college or university, while the other third is enrolled for vocational training, he reported.
“That includes all the police, firefighters, nurses, paramedics — the list goes on,” he said. “That is huge numbers. A big economic impact.”
With the nation’s economy in the doldrums, community colleges are even more in demand.
“Traditional thinking says that when the economy is down, people return to school for more education, or even go directly to school instead of joining the workforce right after high school,” Birmingham said.
He admitted the line of groups seeking funding from lawmakers will be lengthy.
“I sympathize with the legislature,” he said. “There’s only so much money to go around. It would be unrealistic for us to expect to get all we need. What we’re hoping for is a positive increase. But no one will know for sure until the revenue numbers are released in January.”
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