By Daniel DeMay
Editor in Chief
Shoreline 12-10-2010 – Administrators, classified staff, and full-time faculty jobs went on the chopping block today as new cuts to SCC’s budget were announced at the All Campus meeting in the PUB main dining room.
Positions to be cut include seven administratORS, five classified staff, and fifteen full-time faculty.
The mood of the near-full dining room was morose as two-year total cuts as high as 35.9 percent were shown in the Power Point presentation.
President Lee Lambert said the level of cuts depends on the outcome of the special legislative session on Dec. 11, but if cuts aren’t made now, they will no doubt be cut later.
Unlike cuts in previous years, these positions would be eliminated by the end of winter quarter, instead of in June, if the state budget comes out as predicted.
Lambert said he had talked to “almost everyone” who could potentially lose their job, but he did not announce any names specifically.
Lambert said that, as state funding is decreased, SCC needs to become more self-supporting. He said that increasing the size of the International program would give the college the best return on its investment because the international students pay significantly higher tuition than resident students.
Lambert also pointed out that increasing the size of SCC’s online classes or “virtual college,” as he called it, would help increase the number of full-time enrollments (FTEs) which would help maintain some of the state support.
Several questions asked how the college could increase enrollment while cutting faculty and still provide a high quality of education.
Lambert said that SCC would be moving toward a model that served fewer FTEs – and more of them online – and that the college would need to determine what number of full-time faculty was the minimum needed to serve that number of students.
The positions to be cut ranged from at least one vice president to social science to business. Lambert pointed out that the number of administrators left after the cuts would be close to the minimum number needed to maintain accreditation. However, he did not say that there was a specific number for this.
Lambert said that, as these cuts continue coming down on SCC, “we have to start getting closer and closer to the classroom. Soon it’s going to become even more wholesale. It’s going to hit the classroom very hard.”
