Community colleges feel inadequate funding pinch

FORT COLLINS – Bob Bacon is frustrated.

Make that a lot frustrated – by the lack of funding available for higher education in a prosperous state with a well-educated population.

“The general public doesn’t understand that our state’s education facilities are suffering tremendously,´ said state Sen. Bacon, D-Fort Collins, vice-chair of the Senate Capital Development Committee and a member of the Senate Education Committee.. “It’s a sad state of affairs for the whole higher education system, but our community colleges get even less.”

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Most attention is usually focused on the state’s public universities, and Colorado State University President Larry Penley has been trying to raise public awareness for CSU’s plight, noting in his May 30 state-of-the-university address that Colorado is now ranked 50th among states in its support of higher education.

But the state’s community colleges are also woefully short on funding, and Bacon has seen firsthand in the state legislature how constrained Colorado is in making the situation better. Constrained by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which sets limits on state spending; the Gallagher Amendment, which defines limits on property taxes; and Amendment 23, which mandates annual increases to K-12 education, there’s little money left in the budget to apply toward higher education.

Add to that a growing need for billions of dollars to build and repair roads, expand prisons, fund Medicaid and pay for other infrastructure improvements along with complex funding formulas that have to be followed, and it’s a bleak outlook.

“All of this is more complicated than anyone needs to understand,” Bacon said. “It’s a Byzantine system that’s hardly understood even by those of us in the legislature.”

What is understood by most observers is that the state’s higher education system is creaking and sagging and facing enormous challenges.

Front Range hitting wall

Bacon is particularly concerned about Front Range Community College’s Larimer campus in Fort Collins. The 47-acre facility is home to a growing number of students – desperately needed nursing students, high school students getting specialized instruction, vocational students and post-high school students looking to eventually enter CSU and other universities.

Jim Butzek, Larimer campus vice president, said since the school opened in 1988 enrollment has gone up 368 percent while new construction space has only increased by 68 percent. Today, the campus in southwest Fort Collins is becoming seriously cramped and overcrowded and unable to provide the facilities – particularly laboratories – needed to train additional nursing and science students.

“Our facilities have become strained, but the biggest strain is on our science facilities,” Butzek said. “We have a large nursing program and turn out 120 students each year, but we don’t have enough lab space to expand our program.”

Butzek estimates that Front Range is about 90,000 square feet short of what it needs in lab and classroom space. He said the college’s biggest wish is to build a new 38,000-square-foot science facility that would cost between $15 million and $18 million.

But getting that kind of money from the legislature next session with the help of legislators like Bacon and others representing the area is a long shot unless something dramatic changes, Butzek admits.

“We need it,” he said. “Otherwise, there’s no room to do anything else on this campus.”

Butzek said Front Range has recently begun looking for space to expand into Loveland, again if funding can be found. “In the last six weeks we’ve decided to find some space so we can have a presence in Loveland,” he said. “We’ve had some discussions with folks in the Loveland area to lease some space but nothing we can talk about right now.”

Hope on horizon?

Meanwhile, some hope may be on the horizon. David Skaggs, executive director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, said a Higher Education Summit planned for June 8-9 will focus on finding ways to start pulling the state out of its higher education funding nosedive.

“This particularly pertains to the community college system, which is the point of entry for many students to eventually get a college degree,” he said. “If we don’t do better on expanding funding for community colleges, we’re in serious trouble.”

Skaggs said the situation is becoming dire. “It would take an additional $832 million just to get us to average (in state rankings),” he said. “That’s what the summit is all about – how do we get to a financially stable circumstance for our schools and universities?”

Attending the summit in Colorado Springs will be presidents of the state’s colleges and universities and board chairs, legislators, foundation representatives, Gov. Bill Ritter’s office and others, Skaggs said.

He said any answer to the state’s higher education funding problem will obviously require a strong role by business.

“I think the business community gets this completely, that having a well-educated post-secondary population is absolutely essential to having a solid economy and the kinds of economic prospects it wants for itself and the state,” Skaggs said.

“With luck we’ll reach some consensus on where we want to go and how we’ll get there.”