AUDIT RIGHT TO FAULT COMMUNITY COLLEGES

With 1.8 million students in 73 districts, the California Community College system is the nation’s largest system of higher education. Its low tuition and fees make it a crucial pathway to a better life both for teenagers just out of high school and for older adults looking for new careers. Recognizing the importance of community college, state legislators passed a law in 1989 directing the system to have 75 percent of faculty be full-time, based on evidence such professors could help students more effectively than adjunct instructors could. Additional laws in 1988 and 1991 required the California Community College system to seek a much more diverse faculty that reflected state demographics.

But a new report from the California State Auditor’s office shows that, decades later, the system’s leaders aren’t even close to their goals. The report found that only 60 percent of faculty were full-time — down from 63 percent 20 years ago. In the San Diego Community College District, the percentage was only 50 percent. And the audit noted that the system counts librarians, counselors and some nonacademic workers as faculty so its numbers are arguably inflated. Also, while 47 percent of its students are Latino, only 18 percent of its faculty are. The audit called for much better oversight from the Chancellor’s Office to help meet state goals.

Rather than embrace that role, a 12-page response to the audit by Daisy Gonzales, the interim chancellor of California Community College system, was curtly dismissive. It said that state and federal rules limit system leaders’ oversight authority and leave them with little power over local districts. Yet the California Education Code requires districts that accept state funds to follow state directives. They are not independent entities. Also, the system’s response sidestepped the significance of diversifying its faculty. The San Diego Chicano/Latino Concilio on Higher Education, a coalition of faculty, staff and student advocates, last year detailed the lack of progress on this front — and a refusal of many officials to adequately respond to related public information requests — at University of California, California State University and California Community College campuses in San Diego County.

In an interview with an editorial writer, Geoff Johnson — the chair of the adjunct committee for the American Federation of Teachers’ Local 1931 chapter and the adjunct representative for San Diego Mesa College — criticized California Community College system leaders’ priorities. “They feign ignorance, and they defer responsibility for keeping track of these records,” he said, “and what it allows for is a continuation of, if not expansion of, an ‘adjunctification’ of faculty.” Why? Because sticking with the status quo is much cheaper than meeting the goal of having a faculty that is largely full-time and much more diverse in an era in which California Community College system budgets are always tight and in which enrollment is at a 30-year low.

Gonzales, of course, could have taken another tack in her response to the audit, noting that whatever hiring directives the state gives community colleges, the state’s funding decisions speak louder than its words. That would not have gone over well at the Capitol. But it would speak to a larger truth that’s long been obvious but is rarely spoken aloud: While the California Community College system has far more students, it’s less of a priority for most state lawmakers then the CSU system and, in particular, the UC system. If lawmakers had prioritized this issue, they would have demanded more progress to date — and provided resources to make it happen.

There’s lots of blame and no way to ignore it now.