Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) doesn’t want to fall victim to its own success in this recession. Enrollment in credit programs this past fall set a new record of over 4,800 students, a 17 percent since 2005. Enrollment in noncredit courses jumped 46 percent while the number of those classes increased 36 percent. The spring semester is likely to set records anew as students flock to PVCC in order to stave off or recover from unemployment. Squeezed for space, PVCC will open two new buildings within one year.
Unfortunately, all this growth coincides with another proposed 5 percent cut in state funding as the Commonwealth tries to balance a $2.9 billion deficit.
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Even with enrollment up, PVCC President Frank Friedman thinks the best case scenario is a 5 percent budget cut. |
The state supplies about two-thirds of PVCC’s $15 million budget. It previously cut funding to community colleges 5 percent for 2007 and again for 2008. Each dip has cost PVCC $450,000, as would the current proposal. PVCC offset earlier blows through grants and private fundraising and by deciding not to renovate the old Monticello visitor center once PVCC assumes control of it. The noncredit courses in the Workforce Services division, operated for profit, have also channeled money into the rest of the school.
But PVCC now has little to spare. Worse, President Frank Friedman worries the General Assembly ultimately may cut more than 5 percent, even though community colleges are already the lowest funded and fastest growing piece of Virginia’s higher education.
Hence, Friedman is trimming costs. The school first plans to pare $125,000 from social events, utilities and professional development for faculty. A federal grant also will allow PVCC to free up state money it currently spends on tutoring. PVCC will next stockpile supplies in the end of this fiscal year in order to remove those costs from next year’s budget. But Friedman conceded at the January 14 board meeting, “From there on, it gets to be difficult. It gets to be people.”
PVCC hopes to protect the quality of instruction. It will not increase class sizes and is actually hiring additional full-time faculty in math, English, art, and physics. Nor will PVCC shift money already allocated to the science and technology building under construction or a new ceramics lab. Instead, PVCC will shed several technical degree programs with chronically low enrollment and will likely decrease staffing and operating hours for libraries, admissions, and other support services.
“We have not decided specifics in these areas,” Friedman said, “but that’s where we have to get to next. The bottom line is services for students will be diminished.”
Kathleen Hudson, interim vice president of instruction and student services, puts this recession in context. Budget cuts coincided with increased enrollment in 2002, but enrollment is even higher now, pinching PVCC more. Applications for financial aid are also up, though many students who recently lost jobs appear to have too much income on paper to qualify. Other community colleges fare no better.
“We’re all in the same boat,” she says. And as companies cut their own professional development and people close their wallets, PVCC’s noncredit revenue may also decline.
Friedman and other PVCC staff and students traveled to Richmond January 15 to make the case for preserving as much of their funding as possible. However, Friedman won’t press for more money. A 5 percent cut is the best he hopes for.
“We realize this is a very real budget problem facing the state,” he explains. “We recognize we need to be part of the solution, and we will.” He does, however, ask the legislature to “keep in mind our value, our mission, and our services, and to restore funding quickly once it’s available, as they have done in the past.”
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