NORWICH – There’s nothing about “community” when it comes to community colleges anymore, one local government leader says, and Chenango County taxpayers shouldn’t be charged for its students who choose to attend one.
Town of Pharsalia Supervisor Dennis Brown said last week that Broome Community College - where a number of Chenango County’s college-aged and adult students are enrolled - “owes us an explanation for what they are doing for our community.”
America’s community colleges were originally created in the 1940s to provide those seeking a two-year, post-secondary degree with a public, more affordable and community-based option. According to then President Harry Truman’s 1947 Commission on Education, the dominant feature of a community college was “its intimate relations to the life of the community it serves.”
Nowadays, two-year degree programs have sprung up at all types of educational institutions across the country and have little, if anything, to do with “community.” In fact, the original purpose of community colleges has “changed dramatically,” the dean of Morrisville State University of New York’s Norwich campus said Monday.
“Community colleges are starting up residence halls and building apartments for students to live in,” said Dean Ted Nichols. “They are attracting international students, and there’s a lot of discussion going on right now about them offering bachelor’s degrees. It’s our open market mentality.”
Brown and other county government leaders have repeatedly lamented the 22 percent increase in community college chargebacks to Chenango County over the last several years. While they may have varied, negotiated rates for full-time equivalent students, all tuitions to New York’s community colleges are subsidized - in equal thirds - by the enrolled student, by the county where that student resides and by the state.
Chargebacks to Chenango’s taxpayers totaled $1.1 million in 2007. The Finance Committee, meeting Nov. 29, was forced to apply more than $300,000 in contingency funds in order to balance an unexpected shortfall this year.
Assistant Chenango County Treasurer Ardean Young said the increase in chargebacks could be due to a “drop off” in appropriations from New York state. For example, he said the state previously reimbursed Chenango County for 50 percent of a student’s tuition to the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.
“That’s fallen by the wayside,” said Young. “They stopped the appropriation of funds for FIT, and that school is at a very high rate.” Chenango County pays $8,000 per year per student to attend FIT. Three students are currently enrolled there.
Other factors such as online courses and advanced placement courses offered to high schoolers have boosted chargeback rates as well.
Nearly 440 Chenango County students are enrolled for the fall term at community colleges outside the area, 356 of whom commute to BCC. Colleges in Herkimer, Onondaga and the Finger Lakes are also popular.
County officials say the rising number of local students enrolled in community colleges is “good news,” (it has increased 92 percent since 2001), however they would prefer it if more students chose to attend SUNY Morrisville in Norwich.
Enrollment at the state college’s two-year old campus on Conkey Avenue has declined slightly. There were 554 registered as of Sept. 25 (with a minimum capacity of 1,000) versus 568 in the fall of 2006. Officials had hoped the newly-built structure and programs would eventually attract more students and slash chargeback bills.
Chenango County Treasurer William E. Evans said he would be meeting with Nichols sometime in the near future to discuss recruiting efforts, especially in the southern towns of the county where more students have traditionally chosen BCC.
Nichols said that all counties would be interested in keeping people local, but comparing Morrisville, a state college affiliate, to a community college like BCC is like comparing apples to oranges.
“Tuition and related fees are less down there (at BCC) than they are here,” he said. “We are an agricultural and technical state college affiliate that is and bound by those operations guidelines and requirements.”
Nichols said that students attending community colleges today are preparing to transfer to a four-year institution later. “They want to take advantage of the convenience and relatively low cost for the first two years compared to a four-year private college,” he said.
Morrisville’s technical and agricultural offerings are for students who want more career-oriented programs, he said.
But Morrisville has been without a public relations professional dedicated to recruiting since 2006. Evans, Brown and Town of Lincklaen Supervisor Wayne Outwater commented during the committee meeting last week that they would like to see the position refilled. Evans said he thought there was a correlation between when the recruiter left and when enrollment at Morrisville’s Eaton Center campus began to drop off.
Before asking for a vote to cover the county’s shortfall this year, committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox said, “There is nothing more positive that we spend money on in this county than education. The right thing to do is to have an educated populace.”