Pay for performance, not head count
O.C. Register 2/16/07
Increases in college enrollments create a need for more state support. But sometimes a need is a want supported by bogus evidence. For example, a community college district in Orange County counted senior citizens attending classes in a retirement community as on-campus enrollment to justify "needing" additional funds for constructing more classrooms. And as children sometimes battle among themselves for the attention of their parents, one system of higher education sometimes discredits another to gain an advantage.
Last week, the Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy, a think tank based at Cal State Sacramento, published "Rules of the Game," a report critical of California community colleges that studied 520,000 students who enrolled during the 1999-2000 academic year. IHELP was founded in 2001 by Donald Gerth, a former president of CSU Sacramento, "to enhance leadership and policy for higher education in California and the nation, with an emphasis on community colleges." (One wonders why community colleges didn't form their own think tank.)
The report looks and sounds official, although IHELP consists of five CSU academicians, including its founder. An associate professor and a research specialist wrote the report. Thus, this study, whose seven members hold a vested interest in extolling the virtues of the CSU system, should be ingested cum grano salis.
"Rules of the Game" criticizes the state's community college system, pointing out that more than 75 percent of students didn't complete an A.A. degree or qualify for transfer to a state university. The report charges that state policies impede student success and interfere with students' completing a degree. Authors Nancy Shulock and Colleen Moore concluded that because too few students completed degree programs in community colleges, California's future economy will be damaged because of an insufficient number of college-educated employees.
Although they found few barriers to admission at community colleges, only 60 percent of first-time students intended to earn a degree. Of that smaller group of degree seekers, only 24 percent completed a degree program or transferred to a four-year school within six years.
The report argues that unless the number of community-college transfer students, particularly Hispanic students, increases markedly, the per capita income in California will drop below the national average by 2012.
In fact, enrollment in community colleges is easy. Having vital signs are the only absolute admission criteria. During my 14 years of teaching in a community college district in Orange County, sixth-graders were permitted to enroll in various courses. College administrators were eager to fill empty seats and collect revenue. That approximately 50 percent of community college students drop a class during the semester has never posed a serious concern to administrators: California community colleges receive tax dollars based upon the number of students who enroll in courses – not the number of students who complete them.
Part of the principal finding of the IHELP report has merit: The state should provide additional funding to community colleges for increasing graduation rates. But giving them more money would make sense only if funding also was cut proportionately for students who enroll in a class but drop out or attend only a few sessions.
Awarding community colleges equal funding for students who begin classes but don't earn a course grade rewards schools for not addressing their serious dropout problem, encourages students to drop out instead of to persevere, and wastes tax dollars by paying professors to baby-sit too many adult students.
The Anaheim resident is an educational consultant and online editor.