From Welfare to Work
Anticipated reforms enhance the role of community colleges

By William Trombley
This could be the year that California's vast community college system-106 colleges, 1.4 million students, a $4.2 billion operating budget-finally gets some attention in the State Capital.

Neither Governor Pete Wilson nor the Legislature has paid much notice to higher education in recent years. When they have, it usually has been to quarrel over budgets for the University of California and California State University systems, with scant attention paid to the two-year public colleges.

But this year might be different. If the announced federal and state welfare changes actually come to pass, and if jobs are to be found for masses of people now on welfare, the community colleges will play a major role in providing both general education and specific job training.

"I want to concentrate on the community colleges," Ted Lempert (D-Palo Alto), new chairman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said in an interview. "They have not received the attention they need and they will be vital to our efforts in welfare reform, job training and community development."

A member of the Legislative Analyst's staff agreed. "Welfare will be the prime issue in Sacramento this year, and the community colleges will be an important part of the debate," the staffer said.

The colleges currently enroll at least 125,000 students who receive payments from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) welfare program (which has been given the cheery new acronym TANF-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). Eighty percent of them are women.

The governor's proposed 1997-98 budget includes $53.2 million, in Proposition 98 money, to expand and repackage existing educational and job training programs for welfare recipients, and to come up with new approaches as well.

The money will be spent to expand the work-study program, which places students who are on welfare in jobs while they are still in school; to increase child care and other support services for welfare students; and to pay for community college coordination efforts with county welfare offices, among other purposes.

Connie Anderson, who is coordinating the activities for Community College Chancellor Tom Nussbaum, said the goals are to help currently-enrolled welfare recipients complete their educations and also to develop new, "intensive, short-term" job training programs for new students.

Anderson noted that all this must be done by a chancellor's staff that has been greatly depleted by budget cuts in recent years. "I'm optimistic that we'll be ready to go by next fall," she said, "but I'm not sure that's realistic."

Some community college officials are concerned that the $53 million budget augmentation might not be nearly enough for the enormous task of moving students from welfare to work.

Others believe the money should come from the state General Fund, not from Proposition 98 funds, which are supposed to be earmarked for educational purposes in public schools and community colleges.

"Many of my (Assembly) colleagues are opposed to that," Lempert said. "That will be a hot topic of legislative conversation."

The chief fiscal officer for one of the state's largest community colleges asked, "If Prop. 98 money is going to be used for welfare recipients, what's next-the families of welfare recipients?"

But Connie Anderson replied, "We already spend Prop. 98 money on GAIN (Greater Avenues for Independence) and other welfare programs that help students. I don't see the difference."

The governor's budget proposes a total spending increase of about $238 million for community colleges next year, including $71 million to accommodate expected enrollment growth of 34,250 students. Since Proposition 98 revenue is expected to exceed budget estimates, the two-year colleges probably will receive additional growth money later in the year.

Wilson's "compact" with the University of California and the California State University will continue for another year. The governor has proposed a 6.1 percent increase in General Fund support for UC, about a four percent increase for Cal State.

And for the third year in a row, Wilson has frozen tuitions at their present level-$3,799 at UC, $1,584 at Cal State, $13 per credit unit at the community colleges.

UC enrollment is expected to rise by 1,500 students to a total of 153,000 on nine campuses next year. Cal State's full-time equivalent enrollment is expected to increase by about 3,000 to 258,000.

The Wilson budget proposes a five percent salary increase for UC faculty members (with merit increases, the average will be close to 6.5 percent), but only a 3.4 per cent boost for Cal State professors.

UC "chose to put a heavy emphasis on faculty salaries, but our needs are spread out among many other priorities," said Richard West, Cal State senior vice chancellor for business and finance. These priorities include improved technology, maintenance of buildings and equipment, and the extra costs associated with the new campus at Monterey Bay and another planned for Ventura County.

"We're very disappointed and very upset," said Jerry Bledsoe, executive director of the California Faculty Association, which represents about half of Cal State's instructors. "We felt the trustees made a commitment under the compact" that the pool of money available for faculty salary increases would equal the total increase in state spending for Cal State. "That commitment was kept for the first two years but this year it has been broken and we feel betrayed," Bledsoe said.

The Wilson budget also proposes another hefty boost in Calgrant awards to first-time freshmen who choose to attend private colleges or universities. This year those grants jumped from $5,250 to $7,164, and next year they will increase to $9,105 if the governor's proposal is approved by the Legislature.

Jonathan Brown, executive director of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said more generous state scholarships were partly responsible for a two-percent increase in freshman enrollment at private institutions this year, and he predicted the trend would continue.

The budget includes no money for the "virtual university," the "on-line" approach to higher education that Governor Wilson has proposed as an alternative to the "Western Governors University."

"We're still struggling with a design strategy," explained Joe Rodota, a Wilson aide.

The budget also makes vague mention of "a new breed of charter schools," to be developed by UC and Cal State, in conjunction with local school districts.

However, in a series of telephone calls to the governor's Office of Child Development and Education, to the UC and Cal State systemwide offices and to campuses in each system, it was not possible to elicit any details about this venture.

UC officials thought they had pushed a proposed tenth campus near Merced to the back burner, but they have been thinking again since Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno), the new Assembly Speaker, announced that building the Central Valley campus was his highest legislative priority.

Bustamante has appointed a "select committee" on the tenth campus, headed by Dennis Cardoza, a newly-elected Democratic assemblyman from Merced.

Many people in higher education breathed a sigh of relief when Jack Scott of Pasadena, another newly-elected Democrat, was named to chair the important education subcommittee of the Assembly Budget Committee. Scott, former president of Pasadena City College, replaces Chico Republican Bernie Richter, who, many believed, was using the subcommittee as a sounding board for his strong anti-affirmative action views.

Brooks Firestone (R-Los Olivos), who chaired the Assembly Higher Education Committee in the last legislative session, becomes the vice chair under Lempert. Both Firestone and Lempert attended Princeton University.

On the Senate side, there will not be a higher education subcommittee because, it is said, Education Committee Chair Leroy Greene (D-Sacramento), does not want one. However, John Vasconcellos, a longtime Democratic assemblyman from the San Jose area who was elected to the State Senate last November, is expected to keep a close watch on higher education legislation.