CSN loses federal grant, drawing inequity concerns

Funding of $1.7 million was allocated to aid vets

The College of Southern Nevada has lost a $1.7 million federal grant aimed to boost services for military veterans and will return $84,000 it had already received since October 2014 from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Responding to Review-Journal inquiries about the fumbled grant, administrators said this week that they stopped taking the money after Labor Department officials complained that the school wasn’t following award rules. The lost funds will go to three other community colleges in Northern Nevada that requested the grant with CSN, which must also reassign two employees who were paid through the program.

“There’s no doubt about it — this is totally unfortunate,” said Hyla Winters, CSN’s interim vice president of academic affairs. “We built that with the intent of long-term sustainability. Of course, the financial situation for all public institutions looked brighter two years ago than it does right now.”

Labor Department officials this week did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

GOVERNANCE WOES

Education insiders, meanwhile, expressed dismay over the lost grant and used it to illustrate long-simmering concerns that the state’s college governance structure cheats Nevada’s biggest public college out of money and resources — an argument poised to unfold before lawmakers at next year’s legislative session.

The school is losing the grant as it grapples with sweeping budget cuts blamed, in part, on a new performance-based funding method that has been accused of shrinking resources for Nevada’s community colleges by favoring schools with stronger students.

“CSN has a much higher proportion of high-need students, and they’re going to use more of our student resources,” said Sondra Cosgrove, a social sciences professor at CSN. “On top of that, we’re getting a smaller proportion of money. It compounds on us.”

David Damore, a political science professor and critic of the Nevada System of Higher Education, said the state’s community colleges struggle to garner and maintain federal grants to bolster their budgets instead of relying on limited local resources. He also argues that Southern Nevada colleges get less federal money than their counterparts in Northern Nevada.

CSN — the state’s biggest college — received only a fraction of the $9.9 million total awarded to the state by the 2014 Labor Department grant. Roughly 44,000 students at CSN make up about double the number of students in the north, according to the most recent statewide statistics available.

“It’s just a shame that all this money is going to go to Northern Nevada,” Damore said. “You know, there’s the issue of capacity. We need people in place who a) will get the money, and b) when they have it will know how to make sure it’s used appropriately. Grants come with lots of strings attached to them — it’s not just money to move around without satisfying conditions.”

Still, economic equity has never been better among higher education institutions, said Frank Woodbeck, who is tasked with overseeing NSHE’s so-called Nevada College Collaborative — a coalition of the state’s three northern community colleges.

“The fact is, as we move forward, we are making tremendous progress,” Woodbeck said, noting that the funding formula update of 2013 balanced funding among schools in the north and south. “Can we do better going forward? Sure we can.”

SHRINKING RESOURCES

The Labor Department grant, obtained through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program, aims to give colleges money to work with employers to help job seekers fill in-demand jobs.

Reno-based Western Nevada College — which received most of the money — led the application process. Great Basin College received the second-highest amount, followed by Truckee Meadows Community College and, finally, CSN.

The group vowed to use the money to address workforce needs across Nevada with a special emphasis on veterans and active duty military personnel. CSN used its share to hire three employees earning between $44,000 and $60,000 who were tasked with providing advising services for vets at the school’s Veterans Education & Transition Services Center.

The advising efforts halted abruptly on May 18, when the Labor Department told CSN it would not be getting reimbursed because it didn’t use the grant to develop new programs or activities for veterans. Since then, one of those employees retired — the school is offering the other two workers new NSHE jobs.

“The program for CSN that the DOL was going to fund provided for dedicated academic advisers to work with those veteran populations in those programs of study to get them through to completion,” Winters said. “We made the tough decision that we didn’t want to incur any more additional expenditures at the risk of not being able to get the DOL to sign off on a revised work plan.”

Barbara Walden, who oversaw the grant process at WNC, said the coalition of community colleges is planning to retool its grant requests as the state’s economic development interests shift.

“From my perspective, nobody did anything wrong,” Walden said, noting that CSN’s departure from the contract will bring more money to the remaining northern colleges. “I see this as a kindness on their part.”