President: Funding gap must be fixed

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005 | 11:12 a.m.

Funding per full-time student at community colleges in Nevada for 2004-2005.

If Nevada lawmakers and university system officials don't soon find a way to remedy the disparity in funding between the Community College of Southern Nevada and the other community colleges in the state, Nevada may be hit with a lawsuit down the road, President Richard Carpenter said.

The $3,400 per-student disparity can be viewed as a failure of the state to provide equal access to education to students in Southern Nevada, a disparity that is magnified by the large number of minority students at CCSN, Carpenter said.

Because more than half of all of the minority students enrolled in the entire University and Community College System of Nevada attend CCSN, the funding gap between CCSN and the other community colleges can be seen as a violation of the minority students' rights under the federal Civil Rights Act, Carpenter said.

"The funding gap is growing wider and wider as we are becoming more diverse," Carpenter said. "I don't see this becoming a legal issue, but I'm putting it up as a soft-warning bell."

Nearly 40 percent of CCSN's student body falls into one of four minority groups, including black, Hispanic, Asian or American Indian, according to Fall 2003 system enrollment data, the most recent available. In the same semester, the minority student population at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno was less than 23 percent, at Great Basin College in Elko it was less than 17 percent and at Western Nevada Community College in Carson City the minority population was less than 16 percent.

CCSN is receiving about $5,451 for each full-time student in the 2004-2005 school year while the state's other community colleges are receiving about $8,889 for each full-time student, according to system data. Great Basin, which offers some four-year bachelor's degrees, is receiving about $11,233 per student.

Carpenter said he's seen funding-disparity lawsuits based on race before in other states and during his tenure as president of Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Ala., and he wants state lawmakers to begin to address the gap in the 2005 Legislature before a court case forces the issue.

In Alabama and in the majority of cases he's followed, Carpenter said the court has ruled in favor of plaintiffs the majority of the time, and courts have often ordered the state to immediately rectify the disparity by paying millions of dollars at once to the underfunded schools. That, in turn, "decimated" the other colleges in the system, Carpenter said.

According to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Inc., a national advocacy group tracking funding disparities in both K-12 and higher education, about 45 states have faced lawsuits based on funding inequities. Since 1989, state courts have ruled that the funding systems were unconstitutional in about 19 out of 29 cases, citing seeking relief under under state constitutional education clauses or equal protection clauses. Most of the cases involved plaintiffs seeking relief from inequitable funding in school districts.

In Nevada, it would cost $58 million in the 2005-2007 biennium to eliminate the gap, Carpenter said.

Carpenter's goal for the 2004 Legislative session is not to completely eradicate the gap, but to at least stop it from widening, he said. The gap has increased every year since 1996, growing from $1,365 then to $3,438 now.

"It we are ever going to fix the problem we have to stop it from getting worse," Carpenter said.

The Legislative Committee to Evaluate Higher Education final report, which came out this month, details the funding gap at CCSN and finds that the college is operating at a subsistent funding level. Every other institution has some resources to allocate to other needs that may come up, the study found.

The disparity developed because of CCSN's massive growth, Nevada higher education officials said. CCSN grew faster than the projected rate of growth in the state's funding formula, making it difficult to keep the same level of per-student funding as the other colleges.

"I don't think there has been any intentional unfairness to CCSN (in terms of its funding)," Interim Chancellor Jim Rogers said. "It's just that it's got so damn big and it's gotten so damn big so quickly. And we haven't responded as we should, but there's only 24 hours in a day."

It's also cheaper to educate students at CCSN because of its size, Rogers said, but he agreed with Carpenter that the economy of scale present in the 34,000-student institution does not match the $3,400 difference.

"Efficiency and economy of scale do not add up to 110 percent," Carpenter said. "It should be a 10 to 15 percent difference."

Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, and Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, agreed, and both said they hope to try to resolve the issue during upcoming budget hearings. Cegavske served on the legislative committee to evaluate higher education and Giunchigliani is the former spokeswoman for CCSN. Both women serve on finance committees in the Legislature.

Giunchigliani said the funding gap is a north-south issue as well as a community college issue, as UNR receives about $1,900 more than UNLV per full-time student.

"It's a problem we've allowed to escalate and one we need to start narrowing," Giunchigliani said.

She agreed that the funding gap could lead to lawsuits if it's not rectified.

"Why is the institution serving the greatest need (minority students) getting the least money?" she asked.

Neither state lawmaker nor Carpenter had an immediate solution to the funding disparity. Other states, such as California, have coughed up extra money for underfunded schools.

In July 2004, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger included an $80 million provision as part of the higher education budget to rectify disparities among community colleges based on the county the college was located in.

Both state lawmakers said they would consider using some of the projected state surplus to go toward filling the funding gap.

"I believe (the community college) is where we need to put our money," Cegavske said.