Acknowledging the workhorses of higher education

Eight months after Elena Atanasova immigrated from Bulgaria, she's speaking pretty darned good English and moving closer to her dream of rejoining the health-care profession.

Though her story is unusual, the former midwife is a typical example of how the state's community-college system meets the needs of its community, whether people in need of education or industries in need of trained workers.

Atanasova recently was practicing washing a patient's hair with partner Esther Wangumo from Kenya. They are among 31 foreign-born students in a specially designed certified-nursing-assistant class at South Seattle Community College. The 11-week class trains them not only in the skills needed for their state certification but helps them hone their English. An English-as-a-second-language instructor mentors the instructors in this class and the college's yearlong licensed-practical-nurse class.

South Seattle's approach has been gaining attention in national education circles, but the motivation behind it is routine for community and technical college officials.

"When we see bright, motivated people with known barriers, we don't want to close the door to them," says Collette Swan, a nursing instructor. While Washington's six four-year universities get credit for producing baccalaureate and graduate degrees, the state's community colleges play a major role in feeding them. About 41 percent of people earning bachelor's degrees in this state transferred from community colleges — up from 32 percent in 1988.

Beyond academics, the state's 34 community and technical colleges have missions in work-force training and adult basic education. The 450,000 now enrolled are learning everything from how to speak English and how to read to how to be crackerjack technicians and winemakers. The colleges train 60 percent of the state's nurses and 80 percent of the first-responders.

They are, in many ways, the workhorses of higher education.

But they are pinched also by the state's higher-education financing woes. By 2012, the state Board for Community and Technical Colleges estimates a demand for an additional 12,000 full-time-equivalent spots.

Like the four-year institutions, community colleges have enrolled more students than the state Legislature pays for. Two years ago, the state's two research institutions vowed to roll back their enrollments to state funding levels.

But such an ultimatum is anathema to community colleges, which generally take all comers.

When the economy took a bad turn, the system's dislocated-workers programs swelled to 12,000 students — 4,000 over state funding levels. But the colleges made room anyway. With the economy improving, that particular program is back to even with state funding. Still, even with the 1,400 new slots the Legislature came up with last year, the entire system is over-enrolled by about 2,000.

Priorities for the state board this year include more state funding for work-force training and in the related areas of adult basic education and English-as-a-second-language classes, which is subject to a tuition waiver. Students, mostly low-income, pay $25 a quarter instead of full tuition.

On the other end, community colleges are pushing for more junior- and senior-year-level capacity in the four-year institutions for their qualified graduates, since some are having to sit on waiting lists.

"Upper division capacity for my transfer students is at a crisis point," said Priscilla J. Bell, Highline Community College.

Highline and Central Washington University have a long collaboration, with the Ellensburg-based university offering upper-division classes with help from the Des Moines-based college.

That has flowered into a stunning, new 80,000-square-foot building on Highline's campus that is cohabited by faculty from both schools. The university, which is moving its operations from SeaTac, accommodates about 450 full-time-equivalent students in nine bachelor's and master's degree programs. But the building has the capacity, if state operating money ever permits, to go as high as 1,000.

Not likely any time soon, unfortunately. The state's entire higher-education system is woefully underfunded, crunched between the state's growing population and the state's ongoing budget crisis.

And, sadly, the current Legislature seems not to have the fortitude to undertake the long-term planning and priority-setting that's necessary to solve the problem.

When that happens, though — and it must — the community and technical colleges need their due as a vital part of the greater higher-education system and in helping people improve their opportunities.

Kate Riley's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com