The high-profile White House Community College Summit held Oct. 5 was led by Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the Vice President and a community college professor for 17 years. She spoke of the community college’s role, including opening doors to new career opportunities for the unemployed. She introduced President Obama, who said of Ms. Biden, “She knows personally these colleges are the unsung heroes of America’s educational system. They may not get the credit they deserve or the same resources as other schools but they provide a gateway to millions of Americans to good jobs and a better life.”

President Obama proposed the American Graduation Initiative to pump $12 billion into community colleges and add 5 million new graduates by 2020.

Currently, however, South Seattle Community College, like all community colleges in Washington State, is getting squeezed in yet another annual budget cut.

SSCC had to cut their budget by 7-percent in the 2008-2009 academic year, then another 7 –percent in 2009-2010, and this year the governor announced more cuts, resulting in an additional 6.2- percent at SSCC, or $1.2 million.

“The rumor is another 10-percent cut next year,” said Gary Oertli, the new president of SSCC, and a Chief Sealth alumni, in an interview with the West Seattle Herald Oct. 7. “We have not made the decision where to cut. We’ve been really known to have an open and transparent budget process. I’ll be working with our campus community, college leaders, and with the College Council to put in their recommendations. We want to do it carefully, methodically. It’s down to the point where you’re going to have to look at (cutting) programs and (letting go of) people, tough to do, particularly when our enrollment pressures have never been greater.”

Enrollment is way up at SSCC, serving about 17,000 students at their West Seattle Campus, the Georgetown Apprenticeship & Training Center Campus, and the NewHoly Neighborhood Campus.

“People losing jobs are coming back here to get retrained,” said Oertli. “Many families and students are realizing that they can get as good an education, or better education, here before transferring to a four year college at a much better rate. All the data shows that our students who transfer to U.W., W.S.U., and Seattle U. do as well as, if not better than (those who began at those colleges.) Community college has become the college of choice, not the ‘last chance’ junior college it used to be.

“Our average age is 26, and 80- percent of our students work part time and 40- percent have children. We’re also getting more single dads who lost their jobs, the 40-50 year-old guys.

“There is some discussion on Olympia that maybe tuition should be increased again,” he said. “The challenge with that is with our open door policy. The door starts to close because students can’t afford to come back to college.”

On Oct. 4, one day before the Summit, Melinda Gates announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is investing $34.8 million over five years to help dramatically increase the graduation rates of today’s community college students.

According to the Foundation website, “The Completion by Design program will award competitive grants to groups of community colleges to devise and implement new approaches to make the college experience more responsive to today’s student.

“Most students today who are pursuing an education beyond high school are also balancing the demands of work and family,” Gates said. “Yet colleges haven’t adapted to this new reality. Completion by Design will give enterprising colleges the resources they need to pursue what works for students.”

Oertli promised that SSCC will “aggressively pursue” all grant opportunities that are a good fit for its students, but there are obstacles.

He explained, “Part of the challenge on the grants, particularly Federal and State (grants) is they say you can’t use grant money to directly supplant budget cuts, and fund ongoing things. These grants are to be targeted to special initiatives. We have to be very careful there.”