BY HANK REICHMAN

I’ve been posting pieces about California’s ill-conceived all-online community college, Calbright, and faculty resistance to it pretty much since its inception.  You can find those posts here.  Now that all the state’s community colleges, like pretty much all of higher education nationally, are now offering classes only remotely, using online methods, the charge that Calbright wastefully duplicates existing programs has gained even more credence.  That is a point made last week in an op-ed piece on EdSource by Debbie Klein, president of the Faculty Association for the California Community Colleges (FACCC) and professor of anthropology at Gavilan College.  Professor Klein suggests that the college’s funding would be better employed, in the context of the pandemic, on providing health benefits to part-time faculty members.  Here is some of what she wrote:

The Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), a statewide professional association representing 9,000 faculty members at 114 colleges, has long contended that Calbright violates state law by duplicating programs already offered by other community colleges and therefore has neither added to nor enhanced the services provided by the community college system.

Now that the 114 accredited community colleges have gone fully online, I believe the state has no need for Calbright.

The community college system should divert the remainder of Calbright’s $100 million startup funding, in addition to the $20 million ongoing monies, into health benefits for part-time faculty. During this public health crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the colleges must prioritize health benefits for the faculty upon whom the system relies. By diverting the funding, the system would be making a fiscally smart and ethical investment in the 2.1 million students attending the other 114 community colleges.

Calbright has enrolled around 40 students in one of its three programs, while a few hundred students are enrolled in what are called “essential courses.” Of those, 35 percent have a bachelor’s or associate degree, which is not Calbright’s intended targeted population. Calbright was intended to reach a population of workers with a high school diploma in need of courses that would help them advance in their careers; this is the population served by all 114 community colleges.

Not only has Calbright not fulfilled its purpose, but it is the only community college without its own academic senate, which by state law is responsible for consulting with the administration on all academic and professional matters. Its faculty are not represented by a union. (Faculty members at the other colleges are represented by one of three unions.) Calbright’s board of trustees is the only governing board not elected by the community it serves. Instead, its board is the community college system’s Board of Governors, whose members are appointed by the governor. Finally, Calbright is not accredited — and still has a long way to go to fully get off the ground. Calbright is an experiment that has unfortunately gone awry and is now obsolete.

Continuing to invest taxpayer dollars in Calbright is unconscionable. Investing in faculty health benefits will ensure that the faculty remain healthy and able to continue teaching the courses students need to meet their educational goals. . . .

Just as the coronavirus crisis magnifies systemic inequities in societies across the globe, it also magnifies systemic absurdities. Now the absurdity of pouring taxpayer dollars into Calbright, a project that is fiscally wasteful, is impossible to ignore. As taxpayers who love and benefit from the community colleges, we have an opportunity to address such absurd spending. When people’s lives are in jeopardy, this kind of spending should be called out and redirected into educationally and ethically sound investments.