How Rhode Island Failed CCRI

Two years into the Great Recession - while national data suggests that we've entered into a recovery[1], local conditions show otherwise - fear of further layoffs and general economic uncertainty prevails among many Rhode Islanders, residents of a state that still maintains an unemployment rate far exceeding the national average (11.6% versus 9.6% nationally[Bureau of Labor Statistics, numbers are of June 2010]). In times of economic crisis, individuals tend to look for ways to improve their employability, to extend their skills at the lowest cost. In the United States, the institution in which an adult individual can gain skills and academic credits at the lowest cost has been the community college.

Community Colleges are unique among institutions of higher education in that they have no requirements for application, unlike four-year institutions that may be selective based on high school transcripts or GPA.

Community colleges are also unique in that they offer vocational training alongside low-cost associate's degree programs in the liberal arts, social sciences and humanities. This allows students to choose from a wide variety of programs, from vocational (e.g. technical job training, as for a nurse or mechanic) to a way for students to complete the first two years of a bachelor's degree program at less cost than one would have to pay for the same credits at a four year institution.

A student in the latter program would then be able to transfer to a bachelor's degree-granting institution with less overall cost and especially in today's conditions, debt, than had that transfer student spent all four years at that same four-year school. Yet despite today's economic conditions, the State of Rhode Island has actually increased the cost of attendance for an incoming student at the Community College of Rhode Island. In fact, in this time of great need for low-cost education, the State has increased full-time student tuition 67% from the fall 2006 semester to the current fall 2010 semester[3]. By increasing the financial burdens to young students during a period of weakened job opportunities for those same students, the State of Rhode Island is failing the students at its Community College.

In doing so, the community college risks violating a key tenet of its own mission statement: "We provide affordable open access to higher education at locations throughout the state." (emphasis mine) An early 2009 ABC News story acknowledged the trend towards individuals looking for new skills and/or retraining in community colleges across the country and described the effect as "booming[4]". Booming in demand for education, that is. Supply, on the other hand, has been lagging, especially in the Ocean State. It hasn't just been CCRI students that have seen cost increases for state services. In Rhode Island, a state fiscal deficit that predates the recession has weighed on lawmakers who had been taking steps for years to reduce the state budget deficit. Almost always solved in a late-night vote on Smith Hill, budget gaps had been haunting the state for years.

Some would put some blame on Governor Donald Carcieri's capital gains tax cut and the Alternative Flat Tax (which your author testified against before the General Assembly's House Finance Committee, just months ago) that had put a permanent festering hole in the state's revenue collections. Others argue that public services and the employees unions which provide them are the beneficiaries of a decades-long votes-for-money quid pro quo with the state Democratic Party.

Regardless of the nature of the persistent budget gap, the need for funding for public higher ed has never been greater. The Community College of Rhode Island was only established in 1960, and since then it has never been hit with such great cuts in the state contribution towards student tuition. The actual cost of our education is subsidized by the state, and according to a Providence Journal article of December 12, 2009:

"In the 1990s, the state covered more than 70 percent of the operational costs of the community college. Five years ago, the state covered 58 percent.

"Now, we're down to 46-percent state funding," [CCRI President (and nowCommisioner of the State Board of Governors of Higher Education) Raymond] Di Pasquale said."

Di Pasquale continued: "We have frozen more than 120 positions, and that is significant when you are talking about more students taking more credits, yet we have fewer people to help students achieve success."

The community college was asked to cut $3.4 million. "We've consolidated print services, found energy savings, cut overtime, cut travel, cut professional development. We've cut, as they say, to the bare bones.[5]"

And they have, as your author has seen in his four years at this terrific school. Class sizes have grown; allocation of funds for student life has decreased.

The state has cut tremendously from what it ought to regard as vital economic infrastructure - an institution that turns high school "dropouts" into nurses and engineers - and has with blatant disregard given tax-cut handouts to the richest of the rich[6] and has done so with unspoken disdain for the population that depends on the vital services for which those tax dollars pay.

CCRI's state allocation of funds has been cut so quickly and so deeply that in that same article President DiPasquale commented: "If our enrollment grows any more, we might not be able to take additional students. We might have to shut the door. That's a very real possibility." Repeat to yourself that key statement from the College's Mission Statement: "We provide affordable open access to higher education at locations throughout the state." (Again, emphasis mine.)