FACCC President Dennis Smith's Reaction to

“Rules of the Game”

Dear FACCC Colleagues,

The administration of the California State University took aim and fired a shot directly at the California Community Colleges. Using the cover of their CSU Sacramento based Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy, the CSU system issued the hypercritical “Rules of the Game” report today. Community College leaders have known that this report was coming as Nancy Shulock, the Institute’s Executive Director and CSUS Associate Professor, has been traveling up and down the state, leveling criticism at the CCC System for the past year or so. Not coincidentally, the criticism began as the community college Initiative was beginning to circulate, and the report is issued on the eve of its qualification. We can expect attacks such as these to mount as the Initiative moves to the voters.

Citing only transfer and degree completion rates as justification, the report concluded that community college funding, student fee policy, faculty hiring, and expenditure “rules” should be changed. Conveniently ignoring the reality that the number of transfer-ready community college students is nearly double the number of students that the CSU and UC will accept, and that the majority of students in the CSU system come from community colleges, the writers deign to make sweeping recommendations for changes that would be disastrous if taken seriously.

The first recommendation is a shift from access focused funding to completion based funding. Incredibly, the author writes that, “The requirement that 50% of each college’s budget be spent on direct classroom instruction is perhaps the biggest regulatory obstacle to degree completion…” Another set of “rules” that are recommended to be changed are those pesky faculty policies, such as the 75/25 goal, minimum qualification policies, and uniform salary schedules, because colleges need the flexibility to obtain the human resources they judge will best help students in areas that will strengthen the state and local workforce. Promoting the high fee and high financial aid mantra, the authors recommend allowing the colleges to benefit from fee revenue and to remove restrictions on campus based fees. The last of five recommendations is a call for mandatory standardized assessment and placement of students across all community colleges in California .

FACCC wishes to express appreciation to Chancellor Mark Drummond his leadership in anticipating the flawed report and for speaking up immediately on behalf of community colleges, our students, and for us.  However, the faculty should speak for themselves.  There are thousands of student success stories that we faculty know about but don't necessarily share with the community.  There is California Community College research data readily available at the CCC Chancellor's Office, at the University of California , at the California Postsecondary Education Commission, and other places to help us tell the whole story.

I do urge every one of us to do a little homework of the research, talk to your current and former students, gather up the success stories, and start writing and speaking up for multiple mission successes of our Los Rios community colleges in every forum available to you.  One such forum is the FACCC Journal, FACCCTS, and this Web site, www.faccc.org.

Please send me a copy of your success stories and your thoughts on the findings and recommendations contained in the CSU sponsored report (smithd@scc.losrios.edu). FACCC must lead the offense to get the entire community college success story out to the public before the next election. If not, those who oppose our missions and policies, or who might be threatened by our rightful constitutional recognition as a segment of higher education, will define us as failures.

Dennis Smith, President
Faculty Association of California Community Colleges
smithd@scc.losrios.edu