ABSTRACT
The issue of funding might come first rather than last. Consistently, instructors and administrators in community colleges complain about the lack of fundingfor salaries, for supplies and equipment, for ancillary services like staff development and student support, for innovative practices like team teaching and learning communities. Their proposals to improve teaching are invariably followed by complaints about resources, with the implication that only money prevents community colleges from becoming “teaching institutions.” Instructors and administrators alike mention funding right off the bat when discussing their top priorities:
Resource issues are overwhelming because of a hierarchy of need implicit in the way most educators think: Fiscal survival is necessary before any institutional improvement, including teaching, can be addressed. As one auto instructor explained the difficulty of focusing on student outcomes:
Everyone complains about resources, of course, but there is substantial basis for these complaints. In 1994-95, public two-year colleges spent an average of $6,346 per full-time equivalent student, compared to $12,925 per student in public four-year colleges, $18,950 in public universities, and $35,745 in private universities. Funding in community colleges is more comparable to K-12 funding-which averaged $5,988 per pupil that year-than it is to spending in other institutions of higher education.
