BY CAPRICE LAWLESS

A hefty third wave of federal funds is headed to higher education, and millions of it to Colorado’s Community College System. Today Pres. Joe Biden signed into law the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The bill includes $40 billion for public higher education. These funds follow the 2020 CARES Act that sent $14 billion to higher education in March and another $22.7 billion in December (Murakami).

Will the 13-college Colorado Community College System use these waves of money to invest in its faculty, which it has impoverished for decades? Since the funds are expected to be distributed largely along the same lines as in the previous 2020 federal packages, it will likely mean nearly $80 million more into CCCS coffers this spring, atop the nearly $80 million it received just a few months ago (see chart below).  By drawing on U.S. Department of Education statistics, the Inside Higher Ed searchable database shows the 13-college Colorado Community College System was slated to receive nearly $80 million from the December 2020 distribution under the CARES Act (Seltzer).  According to Inside Higher Ed reporting today, distribution of the ARPA is expected to send approximately $80 million more to the CCCS now (Murakami). Of interest is how the IHE chart illustrates that only a fraction of the funding each college receives must be used for student aid. The snapshot chart below includes statistics for student aid/other institutional expenses in the CCCS, distilled from the IHE searchable database (Seltzer).

The tsunami of funds coming into the CCCS now is newsworthy, especially considering the most recently published 2020 CCCS Auditor’s Report showing CCCS operating revenues rising more than $10 million per year. By June 2020 those revenues had topped $505 million. The June 2020 report shows CCCS operating revenues had surpassed 2019’s operating revenues by $13 million, and had grown by more than $33 million since 2018. The same report shows an enrollment increase of 1.5%, in 2020, and an increase of $8.7 million in 2020 student tuition and fees by mid-summer (BKD, LLP). Such statistics are an interesting counterpoint to startling reports faculty hear from department chairs and administrators that the CCCS “is always broke” and is, once again “experiencing a dramatic decline in enrollment and funding.”

Will CCCS administrators use any of this flood of money to reward faculty for their valiant work as they built, overnight, college classrooms atop their own kitchen tables and garage workbenches when the historic coronavirus forced them to teach from their homes online instead of face-to-face on CCCS campuses? Will the CCCS create a straightforward, professional reimbursement process to refund adjunct faculty for the countless printers, cameras, tripods, laptops, and increased WiFi speed they had to purchase to conduct CCCS classes instead of requiring them, as it does now, to provide a hardship narrative? Will the additional funds and the continued promising financial outlook spur the CCCS to finally send to its adjunct faculty a much-needed pay increase? Those 4,600 teachers (the faculty majority in the CCCS) are in dire need of a pay raise to get them even close to the 28% pay raise the 2014 CCCS identified as immediately necessary then (“Recommendation #8”). CCCS wages to its adjunct faculty – many of whom work a full-time course load and second jobs – remain $10K below the poverty level (MIT). Scholars in the AAUP Colorado Conference have been urging the CCCS to stabilize its faculty by making more full-time positions; positions that would draw from the already high-performing adjunct faculty ranks. Abundant research shows how student success and student retention are attributes directly linked to a stabilized faculty. More full-time positions would also benefit the 20% remaining full-time faculty in the CCCS, whose outsized workloads make it difficult for them to maintain any work/life balance whatsoever.

Finally, in spite of wave after wave of good financial news, will administrators in the 13-college CCCS continue to promulgate the same specious and tired myth that the CCCS is barely hanging on? They like to paint that picture in countless, flowery thank-you notes that faculty ostensibly might use to buy groceries or to pay rent. This is the workplace culture of the CCCS, even while the credit-rating agency Moody’s continues to assign the CCCS the Aa3 rating, describes the outlook for the CCCS as very favorable, and notes how the CCCS is unusual among community colleges in its wealth.

The AAUP Colorado Conference urges the CCCS to take this opportunity to build back better. It should alter its pattern of assigning poverty wages for most of its teachers and of stockpiling $20 million per year in its so-called “reserve fund,” while spending $40K per day on wages for its 63 presidents and vice presidents (Lytle).

Note: Chapter leaders can use the Inside Higher Ed searchable database in Rick Seltzer’s article (see below) to verify what their campus received in the Dec. 2020 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund.  They can also cross-reference the U.S. Department of Education’s listing (by state with some assorted additions at the end) at the CRRSSA-HERF

Rick Seltzer reports IHE is creating a similar, searchable database to capture distribution, by institution, of the ARPA funding to higher education.

Sharing information about your institution’s finances can be a powerful organizing tool. Organizing against austerity rule of debt governance is the topic of next week’s AAUP/AFT webinar, “Organizing Against Financialization in Higher Ed, on Thursday, March 18, at 7:00pm Eastern/4:00pm Pacific. The training will be led by AAUP and AFT members with experience working on issues related to institutional debt, including Eleni Schirmer of UW-Madison, Jason Wozniak and Dana Morrison of West Chester University, and Rich Levy and Joanna Gonsalves of Salem State University. 

Register here for the webinar: https://aft.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvduuurT0qHtIvBpNwNB1wBHxoiXN-_fZu

Caprice Lawless is the co-president of the Colorado conference of the AAUP.

Sources:

BKD, LLP. “Management’s Discussion and Analysis.” Colorado Community College System Financial Statements and Independent Auditor’s Reports Financial Audit Years Ended June 30, 2020 and 2019 Compliance Audit Year Ended June 30, 2020, Report Number 2011F, released March 2021. p. 26. https://leg.colorado.gov/audits-for-department/Colorado-Community-College-System. Accessed 10 March 2021.

Lytle, Fiona. “Re: CORA Request.” E-mail to Caprice Lawless, May 31, 2018.

MIT/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Denver County.” Living Wage Calculator. https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/08031. Accessed 10 March 2021.

Murakami, Kery. “House Joins Senate in Approving $40 Billion in Aid to Higher Education.” Inside Higher Ed, March 11, 2021. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/03/11/house-joins-senate-approving-40b-aid-higher-education?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=fdb9f7b95f-DNU_2021_COPY_02&utm_medium=email. Accessed 11 March 2021.

“Recommendation #8.” Colorado Community College System Adjunct Instructor Task Force. Colorado Community College System, Nov. 2014. https://internal.cccs.edu/wp-content/uploads/documents/CCCS-Adjunct-Task-Force-Report-November-2014.pdf. Accessed 11 March 2021.

Seltzer, Rick. “How Much Will Your College Receive in Coronavirus Stimulus Funding, Part 2?” Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 18 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/18/search-find-how-much-funding-your-college-or-university-will-receive-new-round-covid.  Accessed 3 March 2021.

Yuen, Victoria. “American Rescue Plan Could Help Prevent State Public Higher Education Cuts” Center for American Progress, 10 March 2021.https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-postsecondary/reports/2021/03/10/496936/american-rescue-plan-help-prevent-state-public-higher-education-cuts/. Accessed 11 March 2021.