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C-GCC facing budget hole

By John Mason

If Gov. David Paterson’s proposed budget cuts are enacted by the state Legislature, Columbia-Greene Community College officials are going to have a $104,000 hole to plug in their budget, President James Campion told the Columbia County Board of Supervisors Education Committee Monday.

The state budget year begins April 1, while the college’s budget year begins Sept. 1. State aid arrives quarterly, and the college received its first quarterly aid package, for September through November, intact.

However, the governor’s budget calls for 5 to 6 percent cutbacks across the board, and so the college would lose $52,000 in each of the next two quarters. The fourth quarter, June through August 2009, falls under the state’s next budget, so there’s no telling how much the college’s aid will be at that time, though Campion said, “We think next year’s budget could affect us even more. We have to make all that up between now and Aug. 31, the end of our fiscal year.

“For us, it’s a major reduction,” he said.

The president said he has three options of how to deal with the shortfall.

The first is to cut costs. Costs had already been cut to keep to a 3 percent increase, he said. “We have labor costs, utilities, overhead — we can’t do much with them,” he said.

Another is to reach into the fund balance that has been built up over the years. That amounts to between $1.5 million and $1.6 million, he said.

The recommended amount for a fund balance is about 10 percent of the operating budget, Campion said; the college has an annual budget of about $15 million. Some of the fund balance was already allocated in the college’s 2008-09 budget.

The third option is a mid-year tuition increase. There was already a tuition increase in the 2008-09 budget; Campion said Monday this would be his last resort.

He also told the supervisors he hopes the college will still get its approximately $200,000 in small college supplemental aid, which has nothing to do with the budget, but is not guaranteed from year to year.

Columbia County provides about 17 percent of the college’s operating revenue, and Greene County kicks in 14 percent, with the rest coming from state support, student tuition and miscellaneous revenue sources, the president said.

He also provided the committee with an update on the college’s programs and demographics.

At 1,839 students, Columbia-Greene is the third smallest community college out of 30 in New York state.

“We’d like to reach 2,000 full-time and part-time,” he said. But the number of part-time students has been declining over the years, due to the area’s changing demographics, Campion said. This year, there are 997 full-time students.

The number of Columbia County residents attending the college shot up 4 percent this year, from 819 to 851.

Following a national trend, the percentage of males enrolled compared to females continued to decline. In Fall 2007, there were 693 males and 1,130 females; this fall, the males dropped to 674, and the females rose to 1,165. Should that change prove typical, women will outnumber men by two-to-one by 2011.

Students are also aging slightly; in 2007, the average age was 24.5 years; this year, it’s 25.2.

Campion said his board had directed him to increase minority enrollment. “We went from 6 percent when I came on [in 2000] to 13 percent this year,” he said. “We’re moving towards that goal. This number exceeds the 10 percent minority population in both counties.”

Another program that has expanded dramatically over the last five years, at the urging of the supervisors, is the dual enrollment high school/college program. This allows high school students to earn up to 12 college credits while still in high school.

Seven out of the 12 public school districts in the two counties and Questar III are participating, with 256 students enrolled.

Campion said he hopes to continue to the program, and assured any doubters that there is an accrediting body for the program, that faculty members are required to us the college’s text books, syllabi, methodologies and course content, and that the high school teachers are adjunct college faculty.

There was a 13 percent increase in the number of recent high school graduates entering the college in fall 2008, and a 22 percent increase in Greene County.

“We’re fighting geography in Columbia County,” Campion said. With three major school districts in the northern end of the county, Capital District colleges, particularly Hudson Valley Community College, are a strong draw.

Twenty-five percent of the high school graduating classes in the two counties are coming to Columbia-Greene, he said. The number coming from Hudson High School is up 38 percent since 2000; overall enrollment since 2000 has increased 58 percent.

A more disturbing statistic is that half of the first-time college freshmen take at least one remedial course.

“Students are coming to us underprepared,” Campion said. “The discipline of time management and study skills are becoming more difficult. The school districts are doing admirable jobs, but students are not generally prepared to write college-level research papers.”

One contributing factor is that 90 percent of the students work part-time.

To address the problem, the college has a tutoring center that has already had 500 appointments, primarily in math and science, this year. And a new addition is the writing center, started by Humanities professor Gregg Berninger, whose trained tutors saw 200 visits in fall 2007 and 143 in spring 2008, many of them to help with writing English papers.

“We’re trying to provide a safety net for the students,” Campion said.

One thing attracting students to C-GCC is the new computer forensics program, which combines criminal justice and computer science, and has 20 majors already. On the docket is a science laboratory technology degree, which will prepare students for work in the biomedical fields. It’s still awaiting approval; Campion said he hopes to start it up in fall 2009.

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