DERRICK Z. JACKSON

Community colleges -- doing the most with the least

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist | December 20, 2006
MARY FIFIELD said she was "baffled." Terrence Gomes said he was "quite baffled."
The respective presidents of Bunker Hill Community College and Roxbury Community College are still caressing their foreheads after Mayor Thomas M. Menino bopped them with pre-Christmas lumps of coal. Speaking last week to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Menino praised his "many successes" in fueling economic growth, from housing and office development to his fight against the digital divide and "the great strides" against the school achievement gap.

Then the coal started flying.

"While I'm on the topic of our workforce, let me talk for a moment about the state's community colleges," Menino said in the speech transcript. "They are failing our students, and failing our businesses. They are failing the cities and towns of this Commonwealth. The two community colleges located in Boston graduate fewer than 15 percent of their full-time students, the lowest rates in the state. It is my sincere hope that the new governor will shake up that system and I offer my help with the community colleges here in the city."

The first way Menino can help is to put a hand over his mouth. Based on the self-congratulations, superlatives and salivation over a waterfront city hall that dominated the rest of his speech, you would think that Bunker Hill and Roxbury community colleges were tied for Public Enemy number one. Failing our students, businesses, cities, and towns? C'mon. This goes back to almost a year ago when the low graduation rates of the community colleges made the chairman of the state Board of Higher Education, Stephen Tocco, declare, "None of these numbers are acceptable; anything other than 50 percent [graduation rate] is unacceptable."
All the while, the community colleges do the most with the least, for students -- often older students who probably have been through far more than you and me. They are trying to help people pull up their bootstraps on budgets forever strapped.

The mayor, who five years ago derided his own junior college degree by saying "I didn't consider that college," should walk the halls of Bunker Hill or RCC and tell Fifield and Gomes precisely how they are supposed to raise their graduation rates when budgets have been flat-funded for the last five years.

Menino has given Bunker Hill $200,000 over the last two years for getting students into the modern workforce, but Governor Romney's latest spending freeze means that Bunker Hill overall is staring at even less money, $18.7 million, than it had in fiscal 2002, $19.1 million.

"The mayor talks about us preparing people for the workforce," Fifield said Monday. "We've gone from a day nursing program with 60 people two years ago to day, night and weekend programs that have 254 people. I have three health programs on the books to position the school in what everyone says is the future. I have a bio-tech program, a bio-medical program, and a respiratory therapy program proposed. Maybe we'll get one of them up and running with our current budget. But I can't get all three going without state support."

At RCC, where the Romney freeze cut a quarter-million dollars out of the budget, Gomes talked about a three-year, $410,000 grant he has just been awarded by Jane's Trust to collaborate with local schools, health centers, and social service agencies to help prepare a more diverse entry-level work force in the healthcare field, one that might help reduce health disparities in Boston.

"We've got immigrant nurses trying to earn their accreditation with us, we're developing new entrepreneurial progams, a criminal justice program so police officers can continue their education," Gomes said. "Can we do better? We all want to do better. But when they criticize us about graduation rates, it doesn't speak to the reality of our students."

The federal graduation rate for community colleges counts first-time, full-time students who finish in three years. Fifield said that of her 8,500 students, perhaps 900 begin the year as first-time, full-time. At least half of them drop full-time status during the course of the year because they need to work to support their families.

Of the 400 or so full-time students left, Fifield said, "two-thirds have to take some remedial courses, others need child care, and if they can get through that, maybe, just maybe they will graduate. I'm tired of seeing community colleges continue to be a whipping boy. For a state that prides itself on intellectual capital and continues to ride on the prestige of elite schools, ignoring the community colleges is a shame."

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com