Video: State Community Colleges Report Funding Shortfall

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BELDEN, MISS. (WCBI) – Anytime you talk about education, it usually involves money. It’s no different as the Mississippi Community College Board began two days of meetings today at the Itawamba Community College campus in Belden.

After three years of record growth during the recession, community college enrollment is flattening out in Mississippi. But that doesn’t mean the need for the skills and academic training offered by the state’s 15 two-year schools aren’t still in major demand.

“We get told all the time that community colleges are the best educational bargain in the state, which is absolutely true and we’re asking the legislature to begin to move the needle toward increased funding, which everybody acknowledges in needed and deserved,” said Dr. Eric Clark, the Executive Director of The Mississippi Community College Board.

As the state continues to attract high-tech manufacturers like Toyota and Yokohama, it needs more and more skilled workers. But those very programs are the ones hardest hit when technical programs don’t have enough money.

“Whether it’s nursing school or whether it’s welders, or plumbers, or electricians, or whatever it is, we could turn out a lot more folks who actually have jobs out there waiting on them if we had the funding for those programs. We simply don’t have the funding to have enough programs to teach people enough job skills to get jobs that are available,” said Dr. Clark.

And it’s not just employers and job-seekers who get caught in the crunch.

“Our faculty members have to have the same credentials as someone teaching in a bachelor’s program at a university but often, our faculty members make less than the folks at the local high school and that’s simply not fair,” said Dr. Clark.

Community college presidents say they’ve done all they can to cut costs while focusing on programs demanded by employers. But if the Legislature doesn’t help cut the funding gap soon, that “bargain” education may end up not being such a bargain for the students and workers who need it most.

“One of the things community colleges in the state pride ourselves with is being affordable and so  we would have to increase tuition just to have basic operation funds,” said Itawamba Community College President, Mike Eaton.

Dr. Clark says funding per student should be around $5,500 but the colleges are at about $3,400 per student.

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