Students at Linn-Benton Community College will see less of a tuition increase than was previously announced, though the college will still move forward with budget reductions, cutting programs and faculty.
The community college’s board of education Monday evening made the decision to lower the college’s tuition increase for the upcoming school year to 5% from the previous proposal of 6% due to the Oregon Legislature greenlighting more state funding than expected.
“Ensuring that hard-working students can obtain higher education while affording basic needs is a high priority for the Board of Education at LBCC,” Board Chair Kristin Adams said in a statement. “We are pleased that we could reduce the tuition increase in order to support that priority.”
The state legislature last week approved the higher education budget for the next two years including $800 million for Oregon’s 17 community colleges. That’s almost $100 million over the last biennium’s budget, but it’s still far lower than what the colleges had requested — $855 million and an additional $50 million in one-time funds.
LBCC’s Vice President of Finance and Operations Sheldon Flom called the state’s funding “good news” for the college, but said during Monday’s meeting that it wouldn’t change the budget as it was previously presented.
“We think it’s a fair and accurate budget,” Flom said
The board went ahead with adopting the proposed budget, including disputed cuts to faculty and academic programs announced earlier this year.
“This has been a very difficult time for the college and is especially challenging for those who are directly affected by these changes,” LBCC president, Lisa Avery, said in a statement at the time. “Despite the challenging climate, I know LBCC will continue to fulfill our mission of economic empowerment for our students and our communities.”
The cuts include the criminal justice and computer science programs, redesigning the Adult Basic Skills program to operate with a lower budget and maybe most controversially eliminating full-time library faculty members, among other reductions.
LBCC President Lisa Avery told OPB earlier this year that those budget decisions were an attempt to address an anticipated shortfall of $4 million in the next two years. She said the proposed cuts total just under $2.5 million.
The LBCC Faculty Association, the college’s faculty union, has been vocally opposed to the cuts.
Association President Claire Burke rehashed concerns at the board meeting Monday, stating that faculty aren’t only mourning lost jobs, they have worries about the effect the budget cuts will have on LBCC’s academics and its ability to serve the campus community.
“Our faculty are not merely teachers delivering lessons to students,” she said, “faculty are administrators of programs, creators of curriculum and caretakers of our college.”
Others outside of LBCC have also aired concerns over the cuts, specifically to the college’s library faculty.
The librarians at Clark College Libraries as well as the Vancouver community college’s Dean of Clark Libraries & Academic Success Services wrote to LBCC’s board last month to share their disappointment in the then-pending decision.
“As librarians at a neighboring community college in the region, we know firsthand how important libraries are for equitable student success particularly in a community college context,” the letter reads. “This decision will devastate the foundation of the higher education experience for your students — of learning how to learn — that librarians are uniquely positioned to provide across the college.”
The Clark College librarians acknowledged the decrease in enrollment that has put a strain on schools throughout the region and the nation, but they wrote to the board members: “Cutting faculty librarian positions is a short-sighted decision that will save LBCC only a fraction of the cost your students will have to pay long-term by not receiving the education and support they are entitled to.”
Like other public colleges and universities, LBCC has seen a drop in enrollment over the years which has contributed to budget difficulties.
Although the college saw a slight increase in enrollment last fall compared to the height of the pandemic in 2020, it has seen a nearly 30% drop in student headcount since 2018.