Published: December 05, 2008 03:42 am      

SCC again is listed among ‘fastest-growing’

Local News

Higher education is one of the areas squeezed tightest by Kentucky’s budget crisis. Higher tuition, declining numbers of undergraduates, and cuts to programs have put academics on shaky ground in the Bluegrass.

Somerset Community College, however, seems to be rising above the fray.

For the second time in the last three years, the area’s own institute of advanced learning, has been recognized as one of the nation’s fastest growing schools of its kind by the publication Community College Week.

The monthly newspaper which reports on two-year colleges, ranked SCC as one of the top 50 community colleges in the 5,000 to 9,999 student category, placing 18th on the list.

That’s up 12 spots from its last appearance on in these rankings. In 2006, Community College Week recognized SCC as tied for the 30th place on the list.

At that time, the periodical noted that SCC had an increase of 4.4 in student enrollment between the Fall 2004 and Fall 2005 semesters, increasing from 5,819 students to 6,075.

This year the newspaper compared Fall 2006 enrollment with Fall 2007 enrollment, which increased 12.6 percent from 6,317 students to 7,110 students.

There are 248 community colleges with enrollments between 5,000 and 9,999 in the United States.

Unfortunately, higher enrollment lists don’t necessary mean success. The title of the Community College Week story was “Squeezed: As Enrollment Surges, Funding Shrinks; Sagging Economy Puts Pressure on Community Colleges.”

SCC is feeling that crunch as well — a looming four percent cut in state funding means that the school will have to find ways to cut an additional $387,000 from an already tight budget.

“Traditionally, community college enrollment increases during an economic downturn,” said Dr. Jo Marshall, President and CEO of SCC. “While our state funding was cut six percent as of July 1, 2008, we did experience a smaller increase in enrollment in the Fall 2008 semester. It is difficult to accommodate more students when we had to eliminate 13 jobs. We were fortunate at that time because nearly all of the people holding those jobs decided to retire, so we didn’t have to lay anybody off.”

In addition to the cuts in state funding, SCC and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System were limited to a 5.3 percent tuition increase by the Council on Post-Secondary Education. KCTCS had asked for a 13 percent tuition increase, while granting the state’s four-year colleges their full tuition requests.

Tuition at SCC and all KCTCS colleges is $121 per credit hour. A traditional 3-credit-hour class will cost $390. In comparison, the University of Kentucky charges $307 per credit-hour for incoming freshmen, so traditional 3-credit-hour course will cost $921. One-credit-hour at Eastern Kentucky University is $253.34 making a three-credit-hour course $760.02.

Budget cuts at SCC have meant canceling classes with low enrollments, limiting the number of part-time professors, and increasing the class sizes and number of classes taught by full-time faculty.

“This really has put SCC between the rock and the hard place,” Marshall explained. “We have more people wanting to go to SCC, but we have fewer professors to teach those classes. The biggest percentage of our operating budget is for personnel, so that’s almost the only place we can cut expenses. It boils down to fewer classes, larger numbers of students in each class, and bigger workloads for our full-time faculty.”

Despite the fact that tuition for KCTCS schools is less than half that of Kentucky’s regional universities, such as EKU, and two and a half times less than UK’s tuition, a survey done by the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges indicates that funding for community colleges in the United States declined 5.2 percent between 2007 and 2008, while regional universities experienced only a 3.7 percent decrease and flagship universities only suffered a 1.8 percent decline in funding.