Community colleges deserve better.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Stephen Candee For The Register-Guard

While the politicians in Salem engage in endless rounds of political gamesmanship, posturing and electoral strategizing, the lives and livelihoods of real people hang in the balance.

I'm speaking of the hundreds of thousands of students for whom a community college is their best, and perhaps last, hope for a better future. Recent comments made by some of our political leaders indicate that while they may be abstractly aware of the economic and social benefits of a healthy community college system, they seem to be unaware of exactly what we do or, more importantly, the population that we serve.

Perhaps that is partly our own fault. We frequently and proudly highlight the accomplishments of selected individual students or groups that have been awarded certain honors, partly as a reflection of ourselves and our institutions, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I have certainly had occasion to boast about past students' academic and career successes, taking pains to ensure that people know that they got their start at the community college. I sometimes wonder if Phil Knight remembers selling his new running shoes at a table as a vendor here at Lane Community College many years ago.

But unlike the universities, we don't have the luxury of screening potential students for admission to community colleges based upon their previous academic records, admitting some and denying others. Nor do we wish to. Our mission, indeed our responsibility, is to take `all comers,' regardless of their previous circumstances. If those in charge of allocating the state's resources were to step onto our campus, they would certainly find the future doctors, lawyers, politicians, business people and those who will enter one of the professional-technical fields. They are beginning their academic careers in our classrooms, starting out here because of academic or financial reasons, or both.

State lawmakers would also find many students here who are in recovery from drug and alcohol addictions, those recently out of the criminal justice system, displaced workers and women transitioning out of difficult and sometimes violent domestic situations. They would find university students who have come here because of academic probation, needing to learn the study skills necessary to succeed when they return to the university. And they would find the vast number of students requiring remedial courses in reading, writing and math who never acquired those skills in high school or even middle school. Perhaps our legislators should consider the challenges facing these students and how rich and significant their successes become before making derisive comments about the "inefficiency" of community colleges offering classes with as few as 15 students in them.

In the wake of rising tuition, the cutting of budgets and the inevitable curtailing or outright loss of programs, I wonder about the alternatives for our students. Some will conclude that they are being priced out of the education market and will either forego higher education entirely, try to work and save up more money to enter at a later date (although the data suggest that is less likely to happen), move out of state to one that seems to place a higher value on the education enterprise (as most others do) or opt for one of the private for-profit colleges that have recently received intense federal scrutiny for costs, recruitment practices, abuse of financial aid, lack of accreditation and high faculty turnover.

Education does not come cheap. While economic efficiency is a laudable goal, it should not be the sole criterion that drives education policy absent the quality and purpose of that education. If legislators think that public safety and human service budgets are high now, I hope that they consider how much higher those budgets will be if they fail to provide the educational resources needed by this already marginalized population.

Stephen Candee is an instructor of political science and coordinator of political and legal internships at Lane Community College, where he has taught for 21 years.