SD4 - Follow-up Report on the Review of the Virginia Community College System
Executive Summary: The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) was founded in 1966 for the purpose of broadening the base of higher education in Virginia. The VCCS is organized as a single, statewide institution of higher education governed by the State Board for Community Colleges. The system consists of 23 community colleges located throughout the Commonwealth, and a system office located in Richmond. The community colleges provide a variety of educational opportunities, serving over 130,000 students per semester through a variety of programs and services. The VCCS is the largest institution of higher education in the Commonwealth. During FY 1989, $180 million in general funds were appropriated in support of the VCCS. Although the VCCS is a State agency, the community colleges have close ties to their communities. Each college has a local board which acts as a link between the college and the community. In addition, citizens advisory councils help the colleges develop programs to meet the training needs of local businesses. Many colleges offer courses and services specifically tailored to the needs of the community. At the time of the first JLARC evaluation in 1975, the VCCS was commended for developing a comprehensive system of community colleges which were generally accessible throughout the Commonwealth in terms of admissions, tuition, and educational programs. Academic staff were committed to the community college philosophy, and students were generally satisfied with the programs and services they received. However, the study also found a lack of attention to day-to-day management in both academic and administrative affairs. Conducting a follow-up review after 15 years allows the 1975 study findings to be used as a benchmark, and for VCCS progress in specific areas to be assessed. The results of the current study show that the VCCS has made significant progress in selected areas, and some progress with regard to all but one of the major 1975 findings. In particular, the VCCS has made great strides in improving geographic access for students, increasing instructional workload, improving system level planning, and developing comprehensive system-wide management information systems. Staff attitudes also remain positive, and students are very satisfied with the programs and services provided by the VCCS. However, the VCCS has grown larger and more complex over the last 15 years. Today, the VCCS faces many new and more difficult challenges, and a number of improvements are necessary. The need for effective management will intensify in the coming years. The foremost challenge for the VCCS in the 1990s is to reconcile expansion with limited resources. The VCCS has expanded its mission significantly over the years, and the system has worked diligently to meet this expanded mission. A wide variety of services are offered to more and more students. In addition, higher education enrollments are projected to grow in Virginia over the next 15 years, and the VCCS will be expected to serve a major proportion of these students. As a result of expansion, there are indications of strain on the system. The VCCS must act to manage further growth within the limitations of available resources. Two major efforts are necessary to manage growth and help ensure educational quality. First, if current fiscal and enrollment trends continue, the VCCS should reassess its broad mission and prioritize among its many programs and services. This would ensure that adequate resources are available for the highest priority activities. Second, given conditions within the system now, specific controls should be instituted to manage enrollment. In the absence of sufficient resources to offer additional class sections, the system might have to turn away students rather than exceed its operational limits. The VCCS must address additional operational problems as well. The curriculum must be managed better to make sure that all programs are productive, and that all credit courses are worthy of State funding. The VCCS must do its part, along with the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) and the senior institutions, to create more system-wide articulation agreements with Virginia's senior institutions. The VCCS must focus its attention on a number of other concerns as well, including safeguarding its computing assets, reexamining certain aspects of the system office organization, and improving a variety of other operational functions. This report summary briefly references major study findings and recommendations. Detailed explanations are contained in the text of the report. The VCCS May Have to Reassess Its Expansive Mission Over the years, the VCCS has expanded its programs and services beyond those specified in the Code of Virginia, and even beyond those listed in the VCCS mission statement. As a result of this expansion, there are growing indications of strain on the system. Full-time faculty workload has increased steadily in recent years even as more part-time faculty have been hired. At some colleges the majority of credit instruction is provided by part-time faculty. Counselor workload may also be a cause for concern. Facilities are beginning to age even as the VCCS serves record enrollments. The Commission on the University of the 21st Century expects that enrollments in Virginia higher education will increase over the next 15 years. The community colleges, like Virginia's other higher education institutions, will be expected to play a role in serving these students. In the event of continued enrollment growth and State fiscal stress, it will be difficult for the VCCS to continue to provide all of the programs and services it currently offers. In this situation, the State Board will have to prioritize among programs currently offered by the VCCS, emphasizing credit instruction over other programs and services. As it charts the future course of the system, the State Board will need additional information in three areas. First, the appropriate role of the VCCS in adult literacy, General Educational Development, and Adult Basic Education programs should be established at the State level. Second, information on the cost and impact of inmate education programs should be acquired. Third, more information on the extent to which tuition is a barrier to enrollment is needed, as financial access is a fundamental component of the VCCS mission. The following recommendations are made: • In the event of continued enrollment growth without increased State resources, the State Board for Community Colleges should prioritize the program areas of the current mission. Within the broad priorities established by the State Board, individual colleges could be given flexibility to allocate resources to meet local needs. • The Secretary of Education should develop a State policy on adult literacy, Adult Basic Education, and General Educational Development programs, defining the roles and responsibilities of various public education institutions. • The VCCS. in conjunction with the Virginia Parole Board, the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Correctional Education, should conduct research on the cost and impact of inmate education provided by the VCCS. • SCHEV and VCCS staff should examine the extent to which tuition may be a barrier to enrollment in community colleges and report the findings to the State Board for Community Colleges. Management Controls Are Needed To Balance Available Resources With Enrollments The VCCS has primarily used two staffing strategies to serve increasing numbers of students: increasing the numbers of students within classes, and hiring more part-time faculty to teach additional classes. Student-to-faculty ratios and part-time faculty usage have increased steadily over the last five years, to the point where VCCS administrators are becoming concerned about the continued quality of education in the VCCS. The VCCS should control these staffing trends before they reach critical levels. While tighter controls could mean limiting enrollments in some instances, this does not mean that the VCCS has to alter its open admissions policy. The community colleges can continue to serve a variety of students demonstrating an ability to benefit, but within established resource constraints. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS should impose controls on college operations to keep student-to-faculty ratios and part-time faculty usage at acceptable levels. The controls should be decided within the VCCS, and should be based on considerations such as educational quality, availability of resources, and the needs of individual community colleges. • The VCCS should establish a policy on the management of part-time faculty, including requirements for orientation, supervision, and evaluation of part-time faculty. • The VCCS should continue to explore alternative strategies for instructional delivery, including developing additional regional programs which serve two or more service regions and continuing to develop alternative means of course delivery such as telecommunications and extended learning. Counselor staffing also requires attention. The 1975 JLARC study found counseling services to be understaffed at a number of colleges, based on student-to-counselor ratios. Today, student-to-counselor ratios are significantly higher than in 1975. In addition, the roles and responsibilities of counselors differ from college to college, and there is a lack of comprehensive information on counselor workload within the system. The following recommendation is made: • The VCCS should conduct a study of its counseling services to determine the appropriate role and responsibilities of VCCS counselors, and implement appropriate counselor staffing guidelines for each college. An additional resource concern is facilities. VCCS facilities are beginning to age, and VCCS administrators expect that the aging of facilities will require increasing amounts of funds for maintenance and upkeep. At the same time, there is a lack of sufficient information on the adequacy of VCCS facilities for current service levels. The VCCS has not updated its system-wide facilities master plan since 1967. Now is an appropriate time for the system to conduct a comprehensive facilities planning process. The following recommendation is made: • The VCCS should prepare a long-range facilities master plan. This plan should inventory current facilities, project major maintenance needs, and project the types of buildings that will be required to meet future needs. In the development of the plan, the VCCS should work with SCHEV to develop a consensus on projected space needs. Certain Aspects of VCCS Budget Operations Should Be Improved The VCCS is funded under the higher education operating budget guidelines maintained by SCHEV. The Appropriations Act specifies a college-by-college appropriation for the VCCS, along with a separate appropriation for the system office. However, the State Board has the authority to pool the appropriations and reallocate resources according to an internal model. Four problems should be addressed in the area of budget operations. First, the college-by-college appropriation creates confusion and administrative burdens, as the colleges do not actually receive the amounts listed in the Appropriations Act. Second, State funding guidelines in the area of student services positions may be inequitable for the VCCS. Third, the VCCS internal allocation model is unnecessarily confusing. Fourth, some colleges are violating the intent of State Board policy against charging operating fees by requiring students to pay such fees directly to third party providers. The following recommendations are made: • The practice of separately listing appropriations for each college and the system office should be reviewed during the upcoming JLARC study of the State budget process. • The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia should modify its higher education funding guidelines to address the VCCS' high proportion of part-time students. • For future allocations, the VCCS should re-label and clearly identify the current equipment line item in its internal resource distribution as the balancing account. • The State Board for Community Colleges should assess current practice with regard to student fees used to cover operating expenses, and revise its policy on student fees accordingly. VCCS Enrollment Records Appear To Be Accurate In Virginia higher education, the unit of service for funding purposes is the fulltime- equivalent (FTE) student. For this reason, it is important for institutions to report accurate enrollment figures. An audit of VCCS enrollment records showed that the system does report its enrollment figures accurately. However, as college records become more automated, the VCCS will need improved controls to ensure that an audit trail is maintained. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS should reexamine its record management policies to make sure that a complete audit trail is maintained for all student enrollment records. • The VCCS should implement and enforce comprehensive policies and procedures for .managing student records, particularly in an automated environment. • The VCCS should continue to study the causes of enrollment fluctuation in order to improve planning information. Curriculum Management Should Be Improved The VCCS is organized as a single institution of higher education, yet the community colleges are diverse. While programs and courses may not be of the exact same nature at each of the colleges, certain curriculum controls should be in place. The VCCS has achieved commendable productivity in its associate degree programs. However, a number of certificate and diploma programs fail to meet minimal standards of productivity, and the VCCS lacks standards for evaluating whether courses are worthy of credit. Also, in some cases oversight of off-campus instruction has been inadequate. The academic integrity of fractional credit courses is also questionable. There is evidence that if State funding were available for non-credit education, most or all fractional credit courses would be offered on a non-credit basis. This indicates that students may be receiving credit for courses which are essentially of a non-credit nature at State expense. Furthermore, fractional credit courses are intended solely for business, industry, and government training, but a number of colleges offer these courses to the general public in violation of State Board Policy. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS should establish productivity standards for certain certificate and diploma programs, and centrally monitor the productivity of these programs on a regular basis. • The VCCS should improve its oversight of courses by establishing standards for credit instruction, post-auditing non-traditional courses, and strictly enforcing the curriculum policies of the State Board. • SCHEV, in cooperation with the VCCS, should conduct an evaluation of the fractional credit course policy of the VCCS, and report the results to the Secretary of Education. The evaluation should determine whether fractional credit courses are an acceptable vehicle for meeting the training needs of business, industry and government. If not, then alternative funding policies for funding short training courses should be examined. • The VCCS should implement specific policies and procedures for the management of off-campus instruction. System-Level Leadership Is Needed for Faculty Recruitment Virginia's community colleges will be expected to meet the challenge of teaching in an increasingly technological society. A diverse and talented faculty will be needed to meet the challenge. Currently, a number of colleges are experiencing difficulty recruiting and retaining science and technology faculty. Also, like many higher education institutions across the nation, the VCCS needs more female and minority faculty. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS Chancellor, in cooperation with the community college presidents, should study the full extent of the difficulties involved in recruiting science and technology faculty, project the system's need for science and technology faculty in the 21st century, and develop strategies for meeting those needs. Salary differentials for science and technology faculty should be among the strategies considered. • The VCCS Chancellor should direct the college presidents to develop specific strategies for developing faculties which are representative of the racial and gender diversity of the community, in addition to their current practice of meeting hiring objectives under the "Virginia Plan for Equal Opportunity in State-Supported Institutions of Higher Education." System-wide Articulation Agreements Should "Be Developed with All Public Senior Institutions The VCCS has developed a variety of productive partnerships with senior institutions, secondary schools, and the business community. However, the VCCS has only been able to develop three system-wide articulation agreements with Virginia's public senior institutions, when agreements with all public senior institutions should be the goal. Active leadership by SCHEV will be needed to address this problem. For its part, the VCCS must continue to develop the quality and consistency of its general education programs. The following recommendation is made: • SCHEV should increase its efforts as a facilitator between the VCCS and Virginia's public senior institutions with the goal of establishing formal system-wide articulation agreements with all public senior institutions in Virginia. System-wide Planning Has Improved, But Some Colleges Need Further Progress The VCCS has made excellent progress in system-wide planning. and is now completing a comprehensive long-range planning process. Each community college is also required to have its own master plan in place. Seven colleges were found to have planning deficiencies. Also, there is a need for system-wide planning guidelines which the colleges can strive to meet. The following recommendations are made: • All community colleges identified as having planning deficiencies at the time of this review should remedy these deficiencies during the next planning cycle. • The VCCS should develop and disseminate community college planning guidelines and ensure that all colleges meet commonly accepted planning criteria. Management Information Systems Are of High Quality, But Further Improvements Are Needed The VCCS has made tremendous progress in developing system-wide management information systems (MIS) through its distributive computing network. However, there are five problem areas which require attention. First, while the network is a tremendous source of management data for colleges, not all colleges have the expertise to access and manipulate the data for local purposes. Second, the physical security of network computing assets is at risk at three sites, and there is no system-wide disaster recovery plan for the network. Third, despite the number and complexity of network computing operations, there is no formal quality assurance function within the data services section. Fourth, the VCCS lacks a central source of information on program approval and productivity. Fifth, it is not clear who should support the growing number of microcomputer systems in the VCCS. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS should improve the physical security of its network computing assets at the system office and at the eastern and central regional computing centers. Also, the VCCS should develop a disaster recovery plan for the system-wide computing network as soon as possible. • The VCCS should: (1) improve the local MIS capability of colleges in need through targeted support from the system office and professional development programs, (2) create a formal quality assurance function within the data services section of the system office, (3) develop a system-wide application for managing academic program information, and (4) establish a strategy for the support of microcomputer technology within the VCCS. The Overall System Is Organized Appropriately The VCCS is organized as a single institution of higher education comprised of 23 different community colleges. This organizational structure generally works well, and there are many examples where the community colleges work cooperatively to achieve common goals. However, in one recent case a college operated an inmate education program in other colleges' service regions without coordinating efforts with the other college presidents and the system office. The following recommendation is made: • The VCCS should coordinate educational efforts which involve multiple community college service regions at the system level. The Role of the System Office Should Be Clarified and Certain Functions Should Be Improved The role of the VCCS system office should be to provide both monitoring and support related to the State Board, the Chancellor, and the colleges. However, there is confusion over whether system office staff should emphasize monitoring, support, or both in their daily operations. Also, support to the colleges might be improved in the areas of facilities and personnel. Finally, there is a need for more active oversight of local funds transactions. The following recommendations are made: • The VCCS Chancellor should clarify the role of the system office and disseminate this information throughout the system. • The VCCS should consider allowing community colleges that are appropriately staffed to assume additional responsibilities in the areas of engineering and facilities construction and personnel. • The State Board should require all community colleges to operate with a single chart of accounts to achieve system-wide unity in local fund reporting. Also, the State Board should require all community colleges to use the newly purchased automated accounting system when it becomes available. At the time of the JLARC review, the system office was structured under two divisions - academic and student affairs and administrative and fiscal affairs. Under this arrangement, concerns were identified with the span of control of the Chancellor, and there appeared to be communication problems between the divisions' sections. A new organizational structure was implemented by the new Chancellor on July 1, 1990. While this new configuration could help alleviate problems with span of control and communication, it is not yet clear how the functions of the vice chancellor positions for academic services and administrative services will relate to the functions of the line units. Over the short term, the Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor will need to carefully monitor and assess activities in these areas to ensure that duplication does not develop. Eventually, these positions may need to be reconfigured. |
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