Nevada’s rural community colleges are cash-strapped. That will only get worse under the current budget proposal. Leaders from those colleges will be in Carson City on Tuesday in hopes of improving their outlook.
Higher education in Nevada has faced some rough years. Now, the picture is beginning to change, but for rural community colleges, namely Western Nevada College and Great Basin, major cuts are still imminent.
“Clearly, there’s a need. We are not just going to cut what have been successful programs, but they may be scaled back, or we’d be hard-pressed to meet the demands going forward.”
That’s Chet Burton, president of Western Nevada College (WNC). He’s talking about their successful dual enrollment program for high school students, as well as training initiatives to prepare the local workforce for jobs with companies like Tesla.
When the funding formula for higher education changed in 2013, WNC and Great Basin saw their budgets drop by millions of dollars. To get through that transition, the colleges received bridge funding over the last two years, but that’s about to run out. And it's not part of this biennium’s budget.
Again, Chet Burton.
“In the current fiscal year, we're getting approximately 13.6 million dollars. Under the budget the governor submitted, our state support drops down to about 11.9 million dollars, so you can see that’s a fairly substantial decrease.”
Burton say they’re not looking for a handout. They just need more time to grow programs that will increase enrollment and, in turn, earn them more money under the new formula. Even if they do receive this bridge funding, they'll still need to cut nearly a million dollars next year.
Dan Klaich, who’s chancellor for the Nevada System of Higher Education, says a million dollars is a lot for these smaller institutions to lose.
"We need to keep in mind these reductions are on the heels of the budget reductions that all the colleges and universities received during the Great Recession. So we're not writing on a clean slate."
Klaich isn't quite sure why Governor Sandoval did not answer the system of higher education's request for two more years of funding. The governor's office did not have a comment for this story.
Either way, these small colleges will be making their case to lawmakers this session about why they need this money to get through the next couple years.
