from VCCA Journal, Volume 6, Number 1, Winter 1991, 54-56
© Copyright 1991 VCCA Journal
Budget cuts scrape the very marrow of our college communities. Legislators, who hold the knife, believe higher education is fat. Not knowing our story, they pile us together with the multiversities. Let someone else debate whether the multiversities are fat. We're just bone.
It's time for us in the VCCS to tell our whole story. Through shared management, we can and must beef up the funding effort. I propose that the chancellor and the presidents form twenty-four teams, one for the central offices and one for each college, of administrators, board members, and support staffand call upon those teams to tell our story as they've been living it.
In Richmond and at the colleges, administrators generally believe that the VCCS funding effort should be handled by a small number of administrators and board members. Given Virginia politics, that protectiveness is understandable. But something isn't working. The knife scrapeseven at our basic services.
The chancellor, his staff, state and local board members, and the presidents take their jobs seriously and work hard to tell our story. After constructing the legislative plan, they work with the legislaturecompeting with dozens of other interest groups. They know it's crucial to hover in the right corridor at the tight time, ready to bargain on the spot.
I applaud their work and encourage all of us to support their thoughtful orchestration of the legislative plan each year. I agree with those who say that it would harm, not help, the effort to carry bus loads of faculty, staff, students, and alumni to overwhelm the state legislature with our many needs. Virginia legislators don't like to be mobbed, and they're already mobbed by scores of lobbyists. Understandably, they've neither the time nor the inclination to hear our whole story while they're in session.
Knowing this, our administrators also try to meet with legislators between annual sessions. But something isn't working. People simply don't understand that we were dreadfully underfunded even before being cut.
If they did know, even the most fiscal conservatives would be appalled and embarrassed. That we give so much of our time and of ourselves on so little money. That the state exploits thousands of part-time faculty, paying them a mere pittance to that we can operate at all as comprehensive community colleges. That we're overcrowded in buildings we can barely afford to maintain. That growing class sizes threaten the very type and quality of education, especially for our many high-risk students who deserve personal attention. That we must spend so much time working on FTES because the funding system itself is ludicrous. That thousands of satisfied students not enrolled in a program don't even show up as being satisfied because the method of program review for community colleges is as ludicrous as the funding system.
Ours is a compelling story of opening doors to thousands of citizens, working with them, challenging them, nurturing them in their desire to prepare themselves for more productive, richer lives. It's also a story of commitment and hard work and demonstrated success by college personneloperating on skeleton budgets.
At the VCCA convention and other VCCS gatherings, I'm always impressed by the energy and dedication of faculty, staff, administrators, board members, students, and alumni. Why not channel this energy and dedication in our funding effortorchestrated as it is now and should be by the chancellor and presidents and boards?
We all know how touched we are when an alumna tells how she dropped out of high school to get married, had three kids, soon found herself divorced and raising those kids, started at the community college, where she found the special help she needed, and now works as a CPA for an area accounting firm. We must also tell the other part of the story: how frustrating it is to be funded so poorly for achieving such successes.
When the chancellor or a president or a local board member tells it, our story can sound self serving. But when a reading teacher explains that it takes a year of hard work for a student to move up one grade level in reading, or when an alumnus tells how the developmental program enabled him to enter and complete college work and begin a career in respiratory therapy, people are touched.
Let an experienced part-time teacher explain how hard she works for much less pay than a graduate student at a nearby university doing the same work with half the number of students. Let a second-year student tell about the decrease in personal attention because of increased class size. Let an administrator tell how much time is wasted because of the FTE-driven funding system. Let a support staff member tell about the range of needs shown by students having no real experience of academia. Let a high school dropout tell how pleased she is about the three night courses which enabled her to be promoted to supervisor of the office where she's worked for twelve years.
Legislators and other community leaders like to feel kinship with education. They'll enjoy dialogue with teachers, students, support staff, administrators, board members, and alumni. They want to be advocates for solutions to our many social problems, and they'll be touched and appreciative and supportive when they hear our story.
Our administrators and board members may think such teamwork is risky. Wasn't the community college movement itself risky? But we've proven what's possible when higher education opens its doors and puts its mind to real teaching. The resurgence of interest in undergraduate teaching at universities across the nation is happening in part because we've shown them upsoundly. If we're to continue our success as democracy's college, we must beef up the funding effort. Now. Together.
Dick Harrington, who teaches English at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, served as the first President of the Virginia Community Colleges Association.