The Fight for Full, Fair Funding for Maryland Community Colleges
Higher Ed State Budgets Must be Based on Impact, Need, Potential
The fight for full and fair funding for community colleges is heating up. State legislators have received over a hundred emails and counting calling for full and fair funding for Maryland’s essential community colleges. Over 2,500 people have signed the “Save Cade Funding for Maryland’s Sixteen Community Colleges” change(dot)org petition. When session concludes, several camps may claim credit for restoring some of the $22 million in cuts initially proposed by Governor Wes Moore. Note this advocacy was led by rank and file faculty on both shores.
The question is not who gets credit for averting the worst possible outcome, or even why the Governor cut community college funding in a budget that saw big increases for public PK-12 and university systems. The real question is why have communities across Maryland allowed the Cade formula for their community colleges, which on paper works out to 29 cents for community colleges for every $1 the state allocates to the University System of Maryland, to be positioned as an aspirational funding ceiling rather than the bare minimum floor?
Universities pull in huge sums through massive multi-year research grants, nine-digit donations, televised sports, surging endowment investments, and out-of-state tuition dollars. Moreover, private colleges and universities in Maryland receive over $100 million per year in direct state aid. Meanwhile, community colleges scrap for much smaller and more restrictive grants, hustle for humble five-digit donations because they serve few wealthy students, and serve almost exclusively in-state students. A formula designed to allocate less state funding to the higher education institutions with the least access to other sources of wealth represents an inverted set of budgetary and educational priorities. What’s more, until the last two years, the promise of the Cade formula was never lived up to by budget makers in Annapolis. It is a testament to the dedication of generations of faculty and staff at Maryland’s 16 community colleges that these schools have been able to do so much over the last eight decades with so little.
Going forward, it will not be enough to for elected officials to make good on the promise of the Cade formula. Twenty-nine cents to community colleges for every dollar to public universities is not only an insufficient quotient, it is illogical and unethical. Community colleges should be funded based on their need and potential, as determined by thoughtful engagement with all relevant stakeholders, not based on a long-unfulfilled formula that systematizes an ill-fitted “junior” status.
This year may not be the year our state’s community college stakeholders win the fight for full and fair funding. But please fill out and send the action form, Marylanders, to let elected officials in Annapolis hear you and to stay connected for the fights to come.
