Holidays

Virginia’s Community Colleges are on break for the holidays.  Look forward to blogging at VaHigherEd.com in January 2009!

What Governor Kaine said about community colleges in his budget cutting speech

The following excerpts come from the Governor’s prepared remarks, which you can see by clicking here:

In higher education, our October actions reduced schools’ 2009 base budgets by 5 to 7%. For 2010, I have increased the reductions to 15% for all schools, except the community colleges and Richard Bland, which will have the reduction level increased to 10%.

My introduced budget includes nearly $26 million in additional money for need-based financial aid. This money will bring every institution up to at least 65 percent of the target financial aid level that has been recommended by SCHEV. My introduced budget also includes increases in the Community College Transfer Grant program, helping more students begin their higher educations at a two-year college and then transfer to a four-year institution to get their degree at a lower cost to their families…

While there are many challenges ahead of us, we can look forward with hope. Even in this atmosphere, our excellent schools, colleges and universities produce the ideas and graduates that will keep driving our economy. The advances we have made in career and technical education and our restructuring of workforce efforts under the community college system enable us to better prepare our dedicated workforce. Our international connections through the Port of Virginia and Dulles Airport give us a unique ability to be a leader in global commerce. These strengths and many others of our beloved Commonwealth continue to be our ticket to a prosperous future.

Governor Kaine announces 10% cut to Virginia’s Community Colleges

Governor Tim Kaine, while addressing General Assembly members on his budget recommendations, just announced a 10% budget cut to Virginia’s Community Colleges and Richard Bland College.  He also announced a 15% cut to Virginia’s four-year public colleges and universities.

The size and scope of Virginia’s budget problem

In just a few minutes, Governor Tim Kaine will speak to a joint meeting of the General Assembly budget committees.  He is expected to announce cuts to both the state budget and state workforce.

We will blog about the details we learn today with regard to their impact on Virginia’s Community Colleges.

In the press clips this morning, we are learning about the size and scope of the budget challenge.  This was part of the report from Bob Lewis at the Associated Press: 

In his Wednesday morning address to the General Assembly’s money committees, Mr. Kaine will increase the official estimate of the projected budget shortfall through June 2010 to nearly $3 billion, said two Democratic legislative leaders who spoke anonymously because the governor had not made his plans public.

 

In his fourth round of cuts in barely a year, Mr. Kaine will propose about $1.7 billion in cuts on top of nearly $2 billion in earlier reductions spanning two state budgets, the legislators said in separate interviews with the Associated Press.

 

Jeff Shapiro with the Richmond Times-Dispatchis reporting that a cigarette tax hike that is part of Kaine’s plan is almost certain to lead to a fight with the Republican leaders of the House of Delegates:

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposal for balancing Virginia’s recession-ravaged budget includes doubling the cigarette tax, delaying an environmental tax break, drawing nearly $500 million from the “rainy-day fund” and pruning 1,500 state jobs, including 530 new layoffs.

 

The package Kaine will detail today, in which he would again go back on a promise not to raise taxes, is drawing criticism from tobacco-industry allies — among them, senior Republicans.

We’ll have more here as the day unfolds.

Virginia’s Community Colleges are focused on workforce needs through the recession and beyond

The Lynchburg News & Advance printed an editorial today that looks at the needs of Virginia’s workforce through the current recession and beyond.

Despite the sour national and global economies, things will turn around, hopefully sooner rather than later. When the economic clouds part, the American worker had better be ready for an even more competitive world.

The editorial explains how Virginia’s Community Colleges, while working through the recession and the government budget challenges that spin-off from it, are focused on the global competitiveness that Virginia communities and employers will need to succeed in the long run.

The commonwealth, in the short run, is facing a budget shortfall of enormous proportions; long term, though, the shortfall in education and competitiveness are of mammoth proportions. Working with private industry, the community college system, in the last decade, has implemented a number of programs and partnerships designed to address the educational challenges the state faces.

The start of the 2009 session of the General Assembly is only weeks away, and the specter of a $3.2 billion shortfall looms over the state Capitol. Now is not the time, though, for Virginia’s leaders to short shrift the future.  

Bad economies are ugly and painful, but the only way to minimize their impact is to ensure that individuals and companinies in Virginia are creating and attracting job opportunities and that requires the cutting edge skills and knowledge that more than half a million people are getting through academic and workforce training programs every year at Virginia’s Community Colleges.

Virginia’s Community Colleges appearing nationally

News about Virginia’s Community Colleges is spreading.

This week, we were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal online – as well as several business wire services — for  our emphasis on transfers as a way to mitigate against higher education cost increases:

Like many states, Virginia saw the financial wisdom of channeling more in-state students to community colleges for their first two years of higher education – rather than building or vastly expanding costlier four-year schools – by promising automatic transfers into its state universities with a minimum grade-point average.

The result: Community-college graduates can even gain automatic entry into the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, one of the top public universities in the country. The program has proven especially valuable for underachieving high-school students who upon proving themselves capable in community college can complete their bachelor’s degree at state universities for which their high-school transcripts would have denied them access.

“Word of the guaranteed-transfer agreements we have with 30 public and private four-year schools is only now beginning to penetrate into the marketplace,” Kraus says. “We think it’s going to become incredibly popular even after the economy recovers.”

And Mountain Empire Community College and Patrick Henry Community College were both mentioned in recent news stories about the Gates Foundation and their grants to help students complete college, due to their successes in the Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream project.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy commends MECC for “a strategy that works,” with a fast-paced remedial mathematics program resulting in a 60 percent pass rate, compared to 27 percent in standards classes.

The Raleigh News & Observer noted that Achieving the Dream helps reduce dropout rates in remedial classes in PHCC as well. Gates Foundation funds will help the Achieving the Dream project continue.

Meanwhile back in Virginia, the city of Roanoke’s guarantee of a free tuition at VWCC for city students with a grade point average of 2.0 is designed to boost high school graduation rates and give students an opportunity to begin a college career. Here’s VWCC President Bobby Sandel’s editorial blog on the topic published in the Roanoke Times. And other colleges are being noted for record enrollments this fall, including J. Sargeant Reynolds (Fox NEWS) and Wytheville Community College (Bland County Messenger) .

– posted by Susan Hayden