Iowa’s 15 community colleges will ask the Legislature for an additional $7.8 million for fiscal year 2006 to restore funding to fiscal 2001 levels, money officials say is necessary to meet the needs of skyrocketing enrollment and businesses for which they provide job training.

Enrollment in the state’s community colleges reached a record 81,800 students in the fall semester, an increase of 4.5 percent, or around 3,520 students from the same time a year prior. Des Moines Area Community College posted the largest gain of any of the schools, with an increase of 1,537 students, bringing total enrollment in the fall semester to 15,256. DMACC is the second-largest school in the system behind Cedar Rapids-based Kirkwood Community College, whose enrollment for the fall semester was 15,480 students.

The enrollment increases come at a time when community colleges are receiving less money from state aid and local property taxes than they did in 1990. The schools received $1,992 per student in state aid and $275 in property tax support in fiscal year 2003, the last year for which audited figures are available, compared with $2,003 in state aid and $360 in property tax support in fiscal 1990, a decrease of $96.

During the same period, state aid to Regents institutions increased $2,395 per student, to $9,816, and state aid to private colleges increased $757 per student, to $2,898.

“We are not after the Regents’ or the privates’ funding,” said Gene Gardner, executive director of the Iowa Association of Community College Trustees, a lobbying and advocacy group based in Des Moines. “They need more money to do their jobs, too, but given the jobs we are supporting, we’re underfunded.

“We’d like to get funding back to the’01 level,” he said. “That doesn’t seem to be an exorbitant asking.”

Community colleges play a critical role in economic development in Iowa, providing job training and retraining programs that Iowa businesses depend upon. IACCT is asking the Legislature to identify a substantial funding source for their technical education, Accelerated Career Education, entrepreneurship program and other economic development initiatives currently funded in part by the Grow Iowa Values Fund, Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund and other sources. Also, they want the technology instruction equipment purchase program,cut in the past two fiscal years, to be reinstated with an appropriation of $3 million, and are seeking greater flexibility in raising local tax levies to support operations. Those levies have been capped at 20¼ cents per $1,000 taxable valuation since 1965, the year the community college system was created, and currently provide 5.8 percent of community college funding in Iowa. In the 1970s, local tax support accounted for about one-fourth of community colleges’ budgets.

The role community colleges in Iowa play in training workers shouldn’t be underestimated as the state’s economic development officials try to lure so-called new economy businesses in the areas of biotechnology and information technology, said Sen. John “Jack” Kibbie, an Emmetsburg Democrat who serves on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education.

“The community college system is the backbone of business in this state and provides the skilled workforce that’s going to earn the salaries needed in this state to make it grow,” he said. “A lot of people are changing professions, especially in the technology age. With the changes in agriculture, health care and all these related issues, the demands on them are really excessive.”

DMACC President Robert Denson said community colleges are able to react quickly to meet business leaders’ demands, shuttering programs that provide job training for which businesses no longer have demands and adding new programs as the need arises. One example is the recent addition of a mortuary science program at DMACC in response to an anticipated shortage of funeral directors. More than 100 students expressed interest in the program, and DMACC was able to accommodate only about a quarter of them.

He also said funding cuts have limited DMACC’s ability to expand its nursing program in response to a critical shortage of registered nurses in Iowa. “We have a two-year waiting list, with 150 students in the queue,” Denson said. Another popular DMACC program in culinary arts has a waiting list of 130 students, he said.

Also, he said, the college has been forced to borrow space in Ankeny from Upper Iowa University to meet the needs of a burgeoning student population.

Officials cited several reasons for the increasing popularity of community colleges, including recent job losses in Iowa’s manufacturing sector,

“Historically, when the economy slows down, enrollment goes up, but I would say our enrollment is going up regardless of the economy, and our hitting our stride is a recognition of the quality of the programs,” Denson said.

Community colleges are an increasingly attractive option for high school graduates who can’t afford the comparatively more expensive tuition at Iowa Regents schools, said state Sen. Wally Horn, a Cedar Rapids Democrat who co-chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education.

“Community colleges basically have people who can’t afford universities when they start college,” he said. “If they can stay home or stay with a relative and drive back and forth, it makes it very affordable.”

About 60 percent of new freshmen in Iowa attend community colleges, according to the College Student Aid Commission.

Horn said Iowa’s community college system is regarded as one of the best in the nation, but students also pay some of the highest community college tuitions in the nation, 71.3 percent, or almost $1,000, above the national average. Tuition costs have increased 38 percent, to an average of $2,754, since the 2000-01 school year. In the past nine years, tuition has increased 65.1 percent.

“It’s time we started reversing that,” Horn said.

If the Legislature fails to approve the additional $7.8 million the community colleges are seeking and more tuition increases are necessary, “it could eliminate kids real quick,” he said.

Kibbie, a longtime champion of Iowa’s community college system, agreed, saying the tuition increases put Iowa at a competitive disadvantage with other states. The tuition paid at Iowa community colleges is the third-highest among surrounding states behind South Dakota and Minnesota, respectively.

“We’ve got to get this tuition growth under control and to get it back to where we only have cost-of-living tuition increases,” Kibbie said.

Community colleges “should have received more” state aid in past legislative sessions, Horn said. “The decision was made by [Republican] leadership to let the community colleges raise tuition to take care of it because the state didn’t have any money. Hopefully, this year we’re going to turn it around. Now it’s time for the state to do their responsibility.”

He’s hopeful that a 25-25 split between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the GOP’s thin two-seat majority in the House of Representatives will result in more cooperation among legislators – and that community colleges will be the beneficiary of that goodwill. With $5 billion to be appropriated, “surely we can dig up the $7.8 million,” he said.

PLUGGING THE BRAIN DRAIN

Students who receive their degrees from one of Iowa’s 15 community colleges are more likely to stay in Iowa after they graduate than their peers who attend Regents institutions or private colleges, according to a study authorized by the Legislature in 2003.

In their review of the study, former state economist and adjunct professor of economics at Drake University Harvey Siegelman and Iowa State University Economics Professor Daniel Otto said only 16.9 percent of community college graduates leave the state after graduation. Their findings, based on information from the Iowa College Student Aid Commission, disputed the findings in “The Socioeconomic Benefits Generated by 15 Community College Districts in Iowa,” which put the attrition rate at 38 percent.

Community colleges are an increasingly popular choice for Iowans pursuing post-high school education. At the beginning of the fall semester of the current academic year, 94.5 percent of the students were from Iowa.