BY CAPRICE LAWLESS

Note: The Colorado Conference published this press release yesterday. It is another example of how activists can be their own journalists. Research your organization and the larger context for the decision-making destroying the profession. Crunch the numbers and provide memorable images of what those numbers mean. Set the record straight with facts wherever and whenever you can do so.

Enrollment in the 13 colleges of the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) declined by less than half a percent since 2020, Chalkbeat reported Sept. 15. This, despite a front-page story ten days prior in the Denver Post describing the juggernaut CCCS as “struggling” because enrollment was down 16 percent from 2019.

To be clear, CCCS enrollment has risen 20,000 since 2006 (see chart below). Furthermore, the CCCS, Colorado’s largest and most financially secure institution of higher education, with an annual budget of more than a half-billion dollars, never struggles nor it is about to do so. If that were the case, the credit-rating agency Moody’s would not continue to give the CCCS its Aa3 rating.

Furthermore, the CCCS received recently more than $170 million in federal aid to cover any losses it experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of interest is how only a fraction of the funding the CCCS receives from that windfall is required to be spent on students. The far larger, “institutional portion” is to cover shortfalls and to build back better. In many states, officials used those funds to send raises to workers. The tsunami of funds flooding the CCCS is newsworthy, especially considering alarming statements officials made earlier this month in the Sept. 15 Denver Post article, and when compared to the 2020 CCCS Financial and Compliance Audit CCCS Independent Auditor’s Report posted in March 2021. That readily available legislative document shows Colorado lawmakers and taxpayers how CCCS operating revenues continue to rise more than $10 million per year. The report describes how, by June 2020, CCCS revenues had topped $505 million, 2020 operating revenues had grown $13 million over 2019, and the CCCS had surpassed 2018 revenues by $33 million. 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. Statistics like these are necessary to disseminate, considering the thick layer of misunderstanding the CCCS has created so far this month.

Misleading statements in the air make it challenging for those unfamiliar with the CCCS to understand the situation of its army of teachers (adjuncts), who continue to press the CCCS for a much-needed pay raise. The CCCS has always had the funds to provide equal-pay-for-equal work among its approx. 1,500 full-time teachers and its 4,500+ adjuncts. The latter, who the CCCS pays $10K below the living wage, are struggling to stay in the profession. Lunchroom rumors say the CCCS might consider a phased-in, 5% per year increase. That sounds promising unless you know the CCCS average wage for adjuncts is $2,500/per course. Recent news out of the CCCS describes how it offers students hallway foodbanks, a free laptop program, and generous stipends to defray the cost of tuition. Such efforts are to be applauded. However, CCCS needs to send funds to its front-line teachers (adjuncts) because they are having the worst semester ever, post COVID-19.

How bad is it? Consider the welfare of typical CCCS adjuncts, who support their teaching by working two or three other jobs. Consider the message they receive when the CCCS sent them a 3% pay “increase” this fall that amounts to $5/week after taxes and campus fees; enough for one latte. This, while they know that the CCCS Chancellor’s wages and benefits exceed $450K, their campus president’s wages exceed $250K, that the wage-and-benefits package for their full-time teaching colleagues tops $70K, and that the state employees gardening outside the classroom doors are paid twice what they are paid for teaching. Keep in mind that the Consumer Price Index for this Colorado is up 5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. CCCS officials like to blame the Colorado State Legislature for low wages to CCCS adjuncts, when in fact, CCCS governing board Policy BP3 -05 gives the 13 college presidents broad authority in personnel issues and the CCCS revenues continue to climb. Also worth noting is that in 2019-20, the CCCS spent more than $27 million on pay raises.  Of the bounty that academic year, CCCS adjuncts were sent a 3%, cup-of-coffee-increase similar to the one bestowed on them this year by CCCS officials.

What’s needed is for at least a few of the 64 CCCS presidents and vice-presidents (whose compensation packages exceed six figures) and the Colo. Dept. of Education to consider the effects on student learning when the overwhelming majority of the teachers in the CCCS are paid far less teaching classes than their students are earning in their own entry-level service jobs. Table 2 illustrates how the needlessly impoverished CCCS adjuncts require not the rumored, phased-in-over-five-years, single-digit “pay raise,” but a double-digit pay increase today.

Table 1: CCCS Enrollment: 2006 to 2021 

Caprice Lawless is copresident of the Colorado Conference of the AAUP. She teaches English at Front Range Community College.