RALEIGH, N.C. — Tinkering with how to calculate state money that North Carolina’s community colleges receive has left many campuses this fall with fewer instructors, larger classes and reduced services for students seeking skills to build careers.
Gov. Pat McCrory signed the state budget bill that contained a provision changing the base funding formula that the 58 colleges have used since 1999. McCrory recommended such a change in his own budget proposal, and legislative leaders essentially went along with it.
Legislators and the governor say the adjustment more accurately reflects true enrollment figures of schools as statewide community college enrollment ramps down from the height of the Great Recession, when the unemployed flooded classrooms. McCrory ultimately wants to determine community college funding more on the programs each campus has that create good-paying jobs and less on student numbers. Those efforts already have started.
“We need to tie more funding to the outcomes of especially placing people in jobs and what the job market needs,” McCrory said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. The traditional formula, he added, “was basically made based upon how many people you have in the seats.”
The change cumulatively means about $20 million less for all the campuses out of the $1.1 billion they’ll receive from the state this year under the formula. But some campuses have had to make larger cuts to courses and staffing levels for their share.
“They are most certainly feeling the pain of this change,” said Jennifer Haygood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the state community college system. She said the system office didn’t request the formula adjustment.
Previously, schools received state allotments based on enrollment counted as the higher of enrollment for the previous year or the average of the prior three years. Now it’s the higher of the previous year or the average of the two prior years. The enrollment number is based on an artificial figure—a “full-time equivalent” student or 16 credit hours taken in a semester.
