Community College Journal - April/May 2012

Q&A
...

Tough Road Ahead
Author and thought leader John Roueche
contemplates the challenges faced by our colleges

that those operating costs are going to increase, not decrease.

Community colleges and many presidents, I believe, are a little unrealistic in looking down the road and believing that we will get through this rough patch in the next three to five years.

A

s head of the prestigious Community College Leadership Program (CCLP) at the University of Texas, Austin, John Roueche has helped shape the careers of hundreds of community college leaders. He’s been called the greatest living author in the field of community college education. And he’s received numerous awards for his work and

JOURNAL: It’s really a microcosm of what’s going on in the larger economy. Community colleges are facing the same problems as a lot of corporations.

contributions. As he prepares to retire after more than four decades in the service of higher education, Roueche sits down with Journal Managing Editor Corey Murray to talk about the challenges community colleges face, the qualities that define strong leadership, and what’s next for the nation’s two-year career and technical colleges. Are community colleges headed for a brighter future? It’s possible, he says. But don’t kid yourself: The road ahead is tougher than you might think.

ROUECHE: Absolutely. Suanne, my wife, and I do a lot of writing, and we’ve been writing about what we saw coming for the last 12 or 15 years. A lot of people early on said we were being overly pessimistic or overly cautious. In the last election, presidents and trustees told us that if Obama got elected, we’d have more money.

JOURNAL: There’s no way around it. This is a critical time for community colleges. What’s the biggest challenge our institutions face right now?

JOHN ROUECHE: If you look at state
support—state funding—of all of
higher education, not just community
colleges, for the last 20 years, most
states have been in steady decline in
support of their public institutions.
The politicians will tell you they have
increased the expenditures. What they
fail to say is that while there have been
modest increases in the actual dollars
available, funding has failed big time
to keep up with enrollment gains. The
amount of money per student—per
full-time student—has gone down
dramatically.
I’ve heard some people say that by
2025, the federal government will
barely have enough money to cover
entitlements and the Department of
Defense. That might be a little scary. On
the other hand, we’ve been borrowing
dollars like crazy just to cover current
operating costs. And we know full well states have been in steady decline in support of their public institutions. The politicians will tell you they have increased the expenditures. What they fail to say is that while there have been modest increases in the actual dollars available, funding has failed big time to keep up with enrollment gains. The amount of money per student—per full-time student—has gone down dramatically. I’ve heard some people say that by 2025, the federal government will barely have enough money to cover entitlements and the Department of Defense . That might be a little scary. On the other hand, we’ve been borrowing dollars like crazy just to cover current operating costs. And we know full well

JOURNAL: And?

ROUECHE: To his credit, the president has proposed significant increases in federal support of community colleges.

JOURNAL: But how much of it have we actually seen? Could that change with programs such as President Obama’s Community College to Career Fund?

ROUECHE: With the federal bud-
get the way it is now—even with all
the people who support community
colleges—I don’t see any rush to sup-
port an $8 billion appropriation in
the budget. It’s one thing to say it’s
important. It’s another to have the
horsepower—to have the logistics—to
make it happen. Talk is cheap. Let’s face
it: Everybody loves community colleges
in terms of public pronouncements, but
new funding is going to be very hard to
come by.