Higher education makes the Dean’s List

Days of whine and roses are gone

Once upon a time, when the state legislature balanced the budget in part by cutting funds for higher education, college administrators automatically went into their Chicken Little impersonations. The lawmakers still cut higher education when times are tough, but the administrators, at least in Whatcom County institutions, no longer claim that the sky is falling. Indeed, the heads of the local colleges seem to relish the challenges presented by tightened budgets.

Administrators have come to realize that the Chicken Little routine never worked on legislators who hear it from all sides when the red pencil comes out.

“Yes, there have been budget cuts,” said Whatcom Community College (WCC) president Harold Heiner, “but we are not mortally wounded. We are not suffering from a terminal condition.”

Heiner’s approach is to grow through the crisis. More students mean more money, so WCC has set out to become a destination community college; that is, one that attracts students from outside the immediate area. WCC already attracts one third of the graduating seniors from Whatcom County.

A new science building should be ready by next summer, a pottery facility is in the works, and a soccer field with artificial turf is on the way. There’s more to it than facilities, however. Heiner firmly believes that an attractive campus and stimulating learning environment are part of the formula for success. Thus, the cascading fountain and works of art located about the campus. Heiner claims that money spent on appearance always pays off in the long run.

“Higher education is a child of the legislature,” said Heiner. “We can’t just sit around and wait for our allowance. Dad’s broke.”

WCC is the fastest growing community college in the state and has been for several years now. Demand is such that some students have to be enrolled on margin, meaning that the tuition they pay does not cover the actual cost of their education. One way to make up for that is to attract more foreign students who pay four times the base tuition.

A third of WCC’s support comes from non-public sources and more of that money may have to be sought in the future. Heiner envisions student housing funded by the WCC Foundation in partnership with some private entity.

Community college enrollment tends to increase when unemployment is higher, so the challenge is to do more with less. In this month’s companion feature on unemployment, it is noted that people who have held one job for a long period of time and are laid off frequently need to expand their skills. WCC wants to become part of that solution as well as becoming a retraining facility for WorkFirst clients moving off the welfare rolls.

Another program that helps fill the coffers at WCC is called Running Start. This attracts 850 to 900 high school juniors and seniors. Some of them need an educational alternative. Some need more challenging material than is offered at the high school level. Some need to escape the high school cliques and peer pressure. All of them are able to enrich themselves at WCC and their high school foots the bill.

Like many employers in the area, WCC relies on the lure of the Bellingham lifestyle to attract faculty.

“Teaching at the community college level is a wonderful secret,” Heiner said, and many of the faculty members agree. They must have at least a master’s degree to teach at WCC and a third of them have doctorates. The demand, however, is outstripping the supply. Many of the teachers from the “baby boom” generation are retiring and there are fewer teachers in the succeeding generations to draw upon.

Seven thousand five hundred full-and-part-time students will enroll at WCC this fall. That is equivalent at about 3,500 full-time students. Somehow, in the face of budget cuts, WCC must find a way to serve them all. Even more challenging are the demands of potential employers who often need skills that are not taught at colleges.

Heiner foresees college/corporate partnerships that would involve the colleges in bringing students to a general level of competence, companies providing internships in particular specialties and the likelihood of a job for the student.

Thomas Jefferson, who was a firm believer in education for the sake of education, may be break dancing in his grave, but times have changed. Learning and training for a job are now inseparable, according to Heiner. You have to be able to afford the books you need to learn.

WCC is actually somewhat less occupationally centered than most community colleges due to the presence of Bellingham Technical College (BTC).

“Workforce preparation is our mission,” said BTC president Gerald Pumphrey. “We prepare students for career entry, skill upgrades, and career change.”

To this end, BTC works closely with the Port of Bellingham, the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Commission.

BTC has several areas of focus. Allied health includes practical nursing, dental assistance, surgical and radiological technology. Whatcom County’s position as a net exporter of health care, thanks to our Canadian neighbors, means that such skills are in high demand.

Another area of focus is applied technology. This includes mechanical and civil engineering, instrumentation, and information technology (IT).

There are also the trades programs, which include welding, auto repair, diesel technology, culinary arts and baking.

BTC has a unique program in fishing technology. It is the only two-year school on the west coast with its own fish hatchery.

“We try to keep the mix aligned with the needs of the community,” Pumphrey said.

Recent layoffs at Georgia-Pacific (G-P) and Intalco haven’t changed the way BTC approaches its mission, but it did generate increased demand for its services. Many of those jobs are not coming back and it opens up new opportunities for the displaced workers.

“It is very exciting to watch the process that those displaced workers go through,” Pumphrey said. “They are very engaged and approach education as a job to be done. They make excellent role models for our younger students.”

Perhaps surprisingly, BTC has seen an influx of laid off workers from Boeing. Pumphrey believes that for those who live north of Seattle, Bellingham is more easily accessible than the traffic clogged Emerald City.

Once again, budget cuts have forced BTC to make some hard choices. Planned enrollment increases have been deferred due to state budget cuts. Large tuition increases have been necessary. Three vacant faculty positions have not been filled and one has actually been laid off. Purchasing and travel have been restricted. In the short-term at least, BTC has become much more of a student supported institution.

Some potential sources of revenue include worker retraining money and increased fundraising. As other institutions are beginning to accept, public/private partnerships may be the wave of the future. That’s already happening at BTC. Health care programs are connected with St. Joseph Hospital and St. Luke’s Foundation. Intel Corporation has provided equipment to train workers in electronics and instrumentation. BTC has contracted with an individual who provides the knowledge and equipment for truck driver training.

While the school’s core constituency is the thirty-something white Caucasian, the county’s population mix is changing. There are many more Hispanics, Russian immigrants and Asian/Pacific Islanders settling here.

“We have to pay close attention to those changes,” Pumphrey said. “We have to make our programs more accessible to those populations and more attractive to high school students. We need to partner with four-year institutions to channel students into baccalaureate programs while recognizing that we occupy a very different niche than Western Washington University.”

BTC works closely with WCC to avoid curriculum overlaps and to coordinate on legislative issues. There is also a close relationship with Skagit Valley College for the same reasons.

Topping the BTC wish list for the future is expansion of the campus. New buildings are needed, as well as labs and equipment. Specific faculty skills need to be recruited.

“It is very challenging to operate on a less than one percent margin,” Pumphrey said. “We will succeed by expanding enrollment, doing more economic development work, and by helping local businesses compete.”

Western Washington University (WWU) is Whatcom County’s largest employer. When Western catches cold, Whatcom County sneezes. Western seems to be weathering the budget cutting virus quite well so far. Like the other institutions, Western prefers to see the glass as half-full rather than half empty.

A major factor in that health is Western’s ability to be content with its niche in the educational system.

“We have a very cohesive administrative team and a very strong board,” said Bob Eide, Vice President for External Affairs. “We all know what we want Western to be, and, just as importantly, what we don’t want it to be.”

Thus, WWU is free to concentrate on what it does best: undergraduate and applied master’s programs. There are no ambitions toward doctorate programs or community education.

Part of the reason for Western’s health is last year’s capital budget, at 57.1 million, the largest in the school’s history. Despite the state’s budget crunch, these funds were retained in the special legislative session ending in March. Projects funded by that money have played a large part in keeping Whatcom County’s construction industry booming. One hundred nine contracts were let in the past year and 90 percent of them went to Whatcom County businesses.

With the other hand, the legislature cut the university’s operating budget by $4.9 million. Needless to say, tuition is going up: $409 per year for in-state undergraduates and $852 for out-of-state students. While the percentage increase is greater for Washington residents, non-residents still pay nearly four times as much to attend Western.

That hasn’t deterred enrollment. It’s up about nine percent from last year, even though new enrollment has been held steady due to concerns about classroom space. Western’s philosophy regarding the quality of education is a major factor in that decision.

WWU president Karen Morse faces the challenge of providing students with a quality education and preparing them to compete in a global environment on a shrinking budget.

“If we want our students to be in economically and socially responsible positions,” Morse said, “it’s going to cost money. Parents and students are going have to cover more of those costs.”

Morse doesn’t take that position lightly. The legislature has cut Western’s allocations all but one year of her tenure. She understands about making hard decisions. At some point, however, the voters are going to have to decide what their priorities are. Polls show that the public supports higher education, but that has to be communicated to the decision makers.

Meantime, Morse intends to keep her institution productive, efficient and accountable. Much of that effort is focused on the business community. Western’s Center for Economic and Business Development is seeking ways to diversify Whatcom County’s economy so that it is not as susceptible to the fluctuations of individual industries.

The Small Business Development Center offers counseling, training and research to local entrepreneurs. Last year, the center served 449 businesses, 90 of which were impacted by the Georgia-Pacific layoffs. Five hundred forty jobs were saved or created. SBDC helped bring $18.5 million in new investments in the past two years.

That is all well and good, but graduates are Western’s most important product. A college degree is a worthy achievement, but equally important is what the graduate can do with that degree.

“A college degree must put the student into a competitive situation,” Morse said. “The degree must be worth something.”

Apparently, a WWU degree is. Companies are coming here to compete for Western graduates because they can become effective employees much more quickly than most.

“If we can’t maintain that quality,” Morse said, “our degrees will become devalued.”

Maintaining that quality means recruiting and retaining top-notch faculty. Western has done well on balance. The emphasis on teaching has resulted in losses to universities that focus on research. On the other hand, WWU has recruited faculty from such prestigious institutions as Penn State and Rutgers.

Once again, the advantages of living in an environment as salubrious as Whatcom County offers have helped offset financial considerations. Western continues to attract teachers whose values include more than just the bottom line.

Economic considerations aside, Western continues to be ranked among the best regional universities in the nation. Washington’s higher education system is judged second in the west and WWU is cited as being among the “best-wired” by those who score colleges on their technological aptitude.

There are other pathways to success that don’t involve a university degree and Bellingham Beauty School (BBS) offers one of those. One of the school’s early graduates was Cis Kennard. She graduated in 1969 and was hired as an instructor. She opened her own salon in 1978 and was so successful that she bought her alma mater in 1985.

“This is a recession-proof business,” Kennard said. “We are even busier in uncertain times.”

Kennard recently backed up that claim by moving part of her school into much larger accommodations. BBS recently inaugurated their new facility on Meridian, but plans to keep the downtown Bellingham location for advanced students.

If you think that beauty school is an easy road, think again. State law requires that cosmeticians take 1,600 hours of training. BBS requires 1,800 hours. That’s a year and a half, minimum. The entry requirements are a high school diploma or a GED, same as a community college.

BBS students are eligible for Pell Grants and Government Student Loan programs just as are their counterparts at community or four-year colleges. The main difference is that BBS graduates can often earn more than those with baccalaureate degrees.

That factor helps attract students from all over the Northwest, in part because of the school’s sterling reputation. Enrollment averages 75-85 at any given time, many of whom come from Alaska.

Once students complete the program, they are required to take a hands-on examination given by the state before they can take a written test. Teachers must be licensed in cosmetology and then complete a 600 hour training and education course. In order to be accredited, the school’s teachers must take 12 hours a year in continuing education.

Students at BBS must learn much more than just how to give a perm. People skills are emphasized. Communication, psychology, and customer service are all part of the curriculum.

Kennard says that students must approach beauty school just like they would approach college. If they devote a comparable amount of effort and time, they will earn a comparable, or even better, salary.

Twelve-year-old boys are now getting their hair styled and colored. As long as that trend remains in place, BBS graduates will be on a course to succeed.

“This is a very secure profession,” said Kennard. “You can always trade a haircut for a sandwich.”

Whatcom County offers more options to high school graduates than almost anyplace you can name. And that versatility, in the long view, is why the local economy can thumb its nose at the rest of the nation.