More Funding, Not More Miracles
The community that makes up the Commonwealth’s community colleges – staff, faculty, administrators, trustees, parents, family, friends, etc.– are a dedicated, resilient group of individuals who, under some of the most challenging of circumstances in the world of higher education, pull off miracles to help move students along the pathway of academic achievement and lifelong success. From the financial advisor, who spends hours assisting each student to navigate a sea of confusing forms and rules, to the instructor who writes multiple drafts of letters of recommendation to help a student win a competitive scholarship, to the college president who enriches the experience of the Student Trustee by involving them in advocating for pro-community college legislation before Congress, students can rest assured that their college’s community has their back.
We, the community of the Commonwealth’s community colleges, have taken, and will continue to take whatever comes at us because we genuinely care about our students and about their prospects for success in the future. We keep doing our best because, frankly, we are on a mission. None of us are in this for the money or other forms of tangible rewards. We want our students to succeed no matter the cost to us.
And herein lies the problem. More often than not, it is the hard-working miracle workers that get taken for granted. Because we get the job done despite funding cuts every year, decision makers find it easy to cut even more. This was the inherent flaw with the Vision Project, a brainchild of Richard Freeland, the former Commissioner of Higher Education. His plan was to adopt a series of metrics to show the public how effective and successful our public higher education intuitions were. He operated on the theory that once the public understood our success, they would be eager to in-crease funding. It did not work out that way. After we allowed ourselves to be measured in every way possible to show how effective we were, decision makers decided that our revenue stream was more than adequate, and so the pattern of yearly funding cuts continued. Meanwhile, the Vision experiment left us with a slew of unhelpful measures for student success, a significant increase in the number of part time un-benefitted employees, increases to our healthcare premiums and co-pays, And herein lies the problem. More often than not, it is the hard-working miracle workers that get taken for grant-ed. Because we get the job done despite funding cuts every year, decision makers find it easy to cut even more. This was the inherent flaw with the Vision Project, a brainchild of Richard Freeland, the former Commissioner of Higher Educa-tion. His plan was to adopt a series of metrics to show the public how effective and successful our public higher educa-tion intuitions were. He operated on the theory that once the public understood our success, they would be eager to in-crease funding. It did not work out that way. After we allowed ourselves to be measured in every way possible to show how effective we were, decision makers decided that our revenue stream was more than adequate, and so the pattern of yearly funding cuts continued. Meanwhile, the Vision experiment left us with a slew of unhelpful measures for student success, a significant increase in the number of part time un-benefitted employees, increases to our healthcare premiums and co-pays, pay raises that are less than inflation, and more stress all around.
Continuing to depend on and demand the unwavering efforts of the college community’s “miracle workers” is unsustainable. Funding support per student is more than 30 percent down from where it was two decades ago. No matter our energy, no matter our honest desire to support our students, we cannot keep this up. We need more funding.
Last month, Senator Joanne M. Comerford (Hampshire, Franklin, and Worcester) presented a bill to get more funding support for public higher education. SD.740, aka the “Cherish Act,” An Act Committing to Higher Education the Resources to Insure a Strong and Healthy Higher Education System, will take us back the funding levels from 2001. This is potentially a $500 million infusion into the Massachusetts public higher education system. If we, the whole community behind the Commonwealth’s community colleges, step up to work together, we can put our community colleges back on the pathway toward future success – for our students, yes, but also for ourselves, and for our communities.
In the weeks and months to come, when the call comes from our Strategic Action Leaders, asking us to make the phone calls, attend the rallies, and send the emails, we need to pick up the phone, go to the rally, and write that email. What we have done for our students, we now need to do for ourselves and for the future of our institutions. I have no doubt we will prevail. We are miracle workers, after all.
Yours,in solidarity,
Margaret Wong