Community college system not meeting Virginia’s needs
Gun violence among our Black youth is at an all-time high. They need opportunity through education and jobs to get them off the streets and on the road to prosperity.
Local businesses are starved for workers and Virginia’s future economic growth depends on a robust and able workforce. There are nearly 300,000 open jobs in the commonwealth and we need to ensure more Virginians and our Black youth have the skills and trades needed to meet this historic demand and grow an opportunity economy for all.
Unfortunately, a key player in the workforce development pipeline is on the sidelines. At a time when other institutions of higher learning are prospering, the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is failing our students, particularly students of color.
Despite nearly $1 billion budget and 17,000 employees, our 23 community colleges are marred by plummeting enrollment, declining quality and a divergence from their stated mission, to “give everyone the opportunity to learn and develop the right skills so lives and communities are strengthened.”
From fall 2010 to fall 2020, Virginia’s four-year public colleges increased enrollment by more than 5%. Contrast that with the commonwealth’s community colleges, where enrollment dropped by 44,000 students, nearly 27%, over the same period, according to the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV).
Along with declining enrollment, VCCS is not equipping students to be career-ready upon exit, affecting African American students the most. Only 15% of African American students graduated with a degree or certification in 2020-2021 despite being the second largest student population. While graduation rates increase among other minority groups, they are declining for African American community college students in the commonwealth.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin said a mission of his administration is to make Virginia the best place to live, work and learn. He rightly petitioned the State Board for Community Colleges for greater collaboration and transparency in the search for a new chancellor, “to ensure alignment with the commonwealth’s overall economic and postsecondary workforce development goals.”
The chancellor vacancy provided the board an opening to break away from the status quo and focus on the postsecondary needs of the commonwealth, the outcomes Virginians desire, and the pathway toward achieving those outcomes.
Regrettably, faced with an opportunity to correct systemic failures within the VCCS and work collaboratively with the Youngkin administration to develop a best-in-class system benefiting communities of color and all Virginians, the board instead chose partisan politics and, for some reason, chose Russell Kavalhuna, a woefully unqualified individual for the position of chancellor.
Kavalhuna has less experience than any of the VCCS’s vice chancellors. He has less experience than most of the 23 VCCS college presidents.
He has been president of Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan, for just four years. His college has an enrollment of just 13,000 students and only two campuses.
To put things in perspective, Tidewater Community College alone has an enrollment of 25,000 students and four campuses. The VCCS has more than 250,000 students, 23 colleges and 40 campuses.
It is obvious that members of the current board have neglected their duties to which they swore an oath. They are either incompetent or had another agenda all together. They were not transparent and did not follow the standard operating procedures of selecting a college president, let alone a chancellor.
Would the U.S. Navy choose a lieutenant to replace an admiral to command a fleet of ships? I think not. The analogy is the same for the VCCS, which has a fleet of 23 colleges. The board needed to hire an admiral, not a lieutenant.
Reforming a failing system is too important to Virginia’s future. The next chancellor needs experience and needs to develop programs that will help our students of color and every Virginian eager to enhance their skills and be career ready.
We respectfully ask the governor to replace the 15-member State Board for Community Colleges immediately with qualified and competent trustees who will check politics at the door, focus on our students and re-open the search committee and hire an admiral of academia to fix our once exceptional and first-class Virginia Community College System.