Q&A with President Stephen Jordan

Written by: Nic Garcia and Tara Moberly

Q: What are the consequences of not getting adequate funding?

A: We were created as this modified open admissions’ institution. With expectations that regardless of what happens to an individual in their educational experience, they can go to Metro. At the same time, these policy makers are saying to us, we have an expectation, you have to sign a performance agreement, about retention and graduation requirements you’re going to do. Well, the whole point is, you can’t have unlimited access to an institution and on the other hand have expectations that you’re going to improve retention and graduation rates while continuously cutting the budget.

Jordan said statistics show students who come to this campus, perhaps two or more years after graduating college need more support services. “They’re the ones that are most likely to be at risk in the first two years without intensive advising.”

Either we’re going to say we’ll continue to accept (all students) and accept that drop out rates will be greater, but I’m not prepared to accept that. I understand the consequences are real that to the people this happens to. They leave with stigmas they leave with large debt. And many never recover.

The other option is to say enough. We’re not going to accept students if we don’t have the resources to support them. People need to understand that. That’s what we’re wrestling with. We’re really wrestling with the mission of this institution.

Q: What kind of message does underfunding send to the students? That we may in the end have to modify the mission of the school?

A: The kind of message it sends, that even an institution like ours there are some expectations that you need to be prepared to do college level work. I would be the first to say that people are capable of doing college level work and still require some remediation. One of the questions is, are their limits on what is reasonable to expect for a student to do college level work if they need one or two remedial classes? I think the data is clear to what happens to students who have multiple remediations. There is a much higher drop out rate. They are less likely to succeed. I think those are issues people need to be aware of. We have a great community college system here. Students should really think ‘Should I really go to community college first and get my academic act together?’ and then transfer here.

More than one-third of all community college transfers come to Metro. More than 30 percent of all transfers.

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“I don’t think anything conscious is going on. So many of the schools are in smaller communities and the institutions are the lifeblood of those communities so their legislators are huge proponents of those institutions and they will spend a lot of their legislative time assuring the safety and longevity of those institutions. We sit here in the middle of Denver and legislators don’t feel the same way about us. They have a lot of other agenda items going on, they see a lot of other things contributing to the economy and so there hasn’t been in the past a group of legislators that will put a stake in the ground for funding for Metro. That’s one of the things we’ve been trying to rectify by starting the Metro caucus. By meeting on a monthly basis with a group of legislators. We’re trying to create a group of people that understand the college and its importance and significance and who will be able to start doing that for us. The truth of it is we got into this position over a long period of time. It started under the consortium. Adams and Western were losing enrollment and we were gaining enrollment and all the money was coming to the trustees, it was really based on our increases and so they thought ‘OK, we’ll help protect Adams and Western and so they can continue to be open by moving some of the money from Metro.’ And then you had the period around 2001 when the new funding formula was developed and the original idea of the (College Opportunity Fund) was to be $4,000 a student. The recession came along and the COF got cut from $4,000 to $2,400 and what they did was come up with another funding formula. We’ve been trying to recover from that ever since.

Last week I was with the president of the state senate who is a real proponent of our institution. But he said in that meeting ‘I think it’s really important that we protect the small schools.’ I think without realizing the cumulative effect of protecting small schools has been. It’s all for good reasons but I don’t think people have looked at the consequences.

Q: In a perfect world, where do we go from here?

A: In a perfect world we would be in an upward environment. And we probably would have been OK. We have a formula that was recognizing on the upward side about leveling the playing field among the institutions. Which is why we got the largest increase (in funding) over the last two years. So, this problem wasn’t created overnight, we’re not going to solve it overnight. IN a perfect world, we’d be on the upside of funding in an eight-to-10-year period which was the govenor’s goal. The problem is I don’t know a 10-year period that goes by without some sort of recession. You’re always taking two steps forward and three steps back.

Q: In May of 2008 you signed a three year contract with two one-year extension options. In light of the financial situation and lack of funding by the state, do you still want to fulfill it?

A: I do. Absoultley. I believe in this place more than ever. I tried to say to the community at the address we will come out of this stonger, better, more committed than ever. And I believe that. That’s the spirit of the people that go to this college. I want to be here to be a part of that. But you know, I would be less than truthful that there aren’t days that are discouraging. And it is discouraging when you see the inequity that exists and when you think of the kind of students we have and what we could do.

I have said to legislators, look, when I arrived at Metro only 38 percent of the credit hours were taught by tenure, tenure track faculty. Nationally, the average is close to 70 percent. I asked them: how many of you would find it acceptable if 60 percent of your child’s K-12 classes were taught by part-time teachers instead of a full time teachers. There isn’t one of you that would find it acceptable but that is what we do to our young people when you put them into our colleges. I think that’s shameful.

Q: The critics of higher education may look at these budget cuts and see that we can continue to run Metro above water. What do you say to them when the economy turns around and we request our funding be increased?

A: Policy makers have to decide what is an acceptable loss rate. That is the point I was making, we’ll survive the budget cuts. We know how to be lean and mean but when we were that way before we went from 58 percent retention rate to 62, to 64, to 68. The likely consequences is we’ll go back down. Here is the issue: we can run lean and mean and we’ll continue to graduate students. One of the things the state needs to keep in mind is we are a part of this larger study that was done nationally: the projected loss of people my age in the workforce that there are not enough people coming up through the K-12 system and the secondary system to make up for that loss. And that in order to make up for that loss we not only have to significantly increase the participation, retention and graduation rates of traditional age students, we will have to reach deeply into non-traditional students, get them back in and educated if we are going to maintain our workforce that it currently is. The obvious consequence of that is if we can’t maintain the workforce as a general economic condition we’re going to decline significantly as a country. That’s why this issue is so important.

You’ve always heard we’re top five in educational attainment, we’re 49th in Coloradans who actually got an education at a Colorado institution, the question is in this competitive environment are you willing to keep betting that we will continue to be successful where we import all of our educated citizens and essentially say to our homegrown citizens we are willing to run the risk you’ll be a part of the social service system, the prison system, the correction system rather than a productive part of the economy. That is what is at stake for Colorado.

Q: What would any cap enrollment policy look like at Metro?

A: We had a meeting at the end of last week. I don’t have any answers yet. But we need to take a look at all the different groups we admit. There are very different groups. There is the traditional, 18-year-old coming straight out of high school.
Second, it’s the same group but they go to work for a couple of years and they come in at 20 years of age or older. You really need to take a look at this group. They’ve taken no math in the last two years. And we know math is one of those subjects that’s not like a bicycle. Then you begin to say maybe its how long these students have had since they took a math class and ask will they really succeed. Then there are GED students. GED is the norm to what high school students currently know, not what they should know. Right off the bat, there is a huge gap between what students do know and should know. But we have said as a marker its OK if you know what your peers know. That’s not acceptable any longer for getting into college. The last thing is we have to get back to the question of community colleges. Some of which come with an AA degree, some of which come without completing a degree. We need to take a look at those students who come to us with less than an AA degree, since our admission standards say we have to admit those 20 years or older, maybe we need to rethink that. What performance have they had? Do they have a higher GPA? It’s things like that we need to consider.

Q: Metro is rolling over $4 million dollars to the next fiscal budget. Is that legal? What’s the precedent?

A: Yes. We do it every year. The amount of carryover has been decreasing the last few years. It’s been a conscious effort on our part to do that. Last year it was close to $10 million. In this case, there are lots of ways we can use that money for one time purposes to help us bridge this problem. In the past few years we’ve used that money on equipment for classrooms. I said professional development is critical to us. We’ve never had the money in our base budget. But we can use the money on an ongoing basis for professional development as one-time funds. There can be a number of other things: critical renovation.

Q: How is Metro’s relationship with AHEC after cutting their budget? Do you expect AHEC to ask for more money from the students directly in fees?

We just took whatever our cuts were as a proportion, we just passed it on to them on a proportional basis. Now, in some sense they get by. I asked all departments to come up with a three-tier approach. Some are going to give more, some are going to give less. Unfortunately, we can’t ask AHEC to give more. When I was in Eastern Washington I could make the decision of what was critical. In some sense they are getting the opportunity to only have to pay the proportional cut. I don’t know how much AHEC will be able to (ask students for more in fees). There will be consequences around the campus that the students will see.

Q: Do you think we can still become the preeminent public urban baccalaureate college in the nation in spite of budget cuts?

A: First of all, every state is going through these kind of cuts. And so, I think the answer to that is yes. Sure, we’re going down. But everyone is going down. The question is going down relative to everyone else? We have teams going out to four different places next month (to study their programs). We’re continuing to press forward. Simply because people have more money than us doesn’t mean we can’t still accomplish that at a lower cost. Will we do it as soon as we hoped? Probably not.

Q: This seems to be your biggest public battle, bringing to light the inequality of Metro’s funding, increasing Metro’s presence in the legislature talk to us about what’s going on.

A: Let’s put it this way: it has been a theme since the day I got here. If you talk to the trustees that hired me, there was no question about that. It was a part of the agenda. The truth of it is, we’ve been pretty successful. I think that’s one of the reasons why you saw us get the largest increases over the last couple of years. I will have to tell you there was no one more disappointed at the methodology that was chosen to implement the budget reductions to higher ed than me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have had budget cuts, but it should have been done differently.

Q: How would you have liked to see it done differently?

A: If we are saying we’re using the funding formula on the way up, those who are furthest away get the biggest increase, then, I said we should have done the same on the way down. While no one can escape a reduction those who are furthest away should get the smallest reduction. That seems to me, to be much more equitable. And more consistent with a goal, which is the governor’s stated position, then you have less problems reaching that goal than the way he’s done it. I was very disappointed. That was a setback. And now we’re responding by giving them new data. If the purpose is to fund Colorado residence, which is what COF is all about, here’s where you’re at today. And give them a chance coming out of this to have a new commitment to fix this.

Q: What’s your biggest fear for the 2009-2010 fiscal budget?

A: A prolonged recession. I’m afraid the budget might have to be cut again halfway through the year like it was this year. I don’t know how much we still have to give.

Q: Where do you foresee in the next five years for higher education and Metro?

A: As sad as this is to say, I think you can expect a real crisis. (Higher education) won’t be fixed until it comes to a real crisis. It’s going to be the interaction of the affects of TABOR, the 6 percent limitation, the recession effect and the expiration of Referendum C all coming together at the same time. I think its going to take this catastrophic kind of event where they’re not going to be able to put the pieces together unless there is a commitment from the public to fix the problem. The other point I think that’s going to play into this, I think you’re seeing the Latino community become much more politically active and the role they might play, combined with the African-American community around this question around the funding of the institution that their children are more likely to go to could be very critical.