Budget cuts concern SFCC

An announcement by Gov. Jay Nixon regarding funding for Missouri’s community college’s has State Fair Community College officials worried over how to make ends meet during the 2010 fall semester.

Nixon announced a plan to freeze tuition at community colleges during a Friday morning news conference. It followed an announcement earlier this week of a similar agreement with the state’s four-year colleges and universities. Under the agreement with Nixon, Missouri’s community colleges have agreed not to impose a tuition increase on in-state students for the 2010-11 school year.

“To turn this economy around, Missourians must be trained, educated and ready to work and that’s why it was vital that we kept tuition flat for Missouri families,” Nixon said. “As tuition skyrockets by double digits in other states, university leaders, faculty members and my administration have worked together to put Missouri students first.”

Nixon called the tuition freeze “a bold step to prepare Missouri’s workforce.”

In exchange for the tuition freeze, Nixon has agreed to keep funding at just under 95 percent of this year’s budget which means community colleges will still lose 5.2 percent of their 2010-11 funding, or about $8 million. Under a similar agreement for the 2009-10 school year, community colleges froze tuition in exchange for stable funding for the fiscal year 2010 budget.

After months of planning and hard work, SFCC President Marsha Drennon said the college was prepared to deal with the cuts affecting the current school year, but the news of future cuts was a surprise.

“Clearly we are going to have some challenges,” Drennon said.

Drennon said cuts in state appropriations would create problems for SFCC in providing competitive salaries for instructors and would make it more difficult to meet the needs of students. Adding additional programs could also prove to be difficult without funding, she said.

“I’m certainly sympathetic to the government,” she said. “I know they are in belt-tightening mode.”

Drennon said SFCC officials plan to work over the next several months to discuss and plan how to maintain their level of quality education on a tight budget.

“We face tremendous challenges,” she said.

While community colleges may struggle to balance their budgets, Nixon stands behind the tuition freeze.

“We’ve all had to make tough choices about ways we can become more efficient and maximize our limited resources,” Nixon said. “By working together, we have been able to preserve our shared priority of making higher education as affordable as possible for Missourians.”

The agreement is subject to approval by the General Assembly and the institutions’ governing boards.

“The leaders of Missouri’s public colleges and universities have come together to make these agreements possible,” Nixon said. “This is a smart thing to do to create a skilled work force.”