Minnesota State could transfer money from colleges

Kind of a cloudy, breezy day across the state here today. A cool one, too. We're only going to get cooler this weekend. We hope to talk a little bit more about that here later on this afternoon. But it's nice and warm inside, and we're glad that you could join us here this afternoon because we have a lot of great discussions that are coming up, including one about a controversial proposal that's really sparking a lot of debate among Minnesota's higher education landscape. The Minnesota state system is weighing really kind of an unprecedented plan to shift millions of dollars from its two-year community colleges and tech colleges to support some of the four-year institutions, the universities that are struggling with enrollment issues. The system leaders are calling this really a necessary stopgap measure to keep those struggling universities afloat. But the critics say this unfairly hurts some of the successful two-year schools by forcing them to kind of pay for all of this in the budget shift. So joining us now to talk more about this impact and what it could have on students and faculty is Nicole Beetz. She serves on the Minnesota State College Faculty Executive Committee and also works as a counselor at Inver Hills Community College. So, Nicole, thanks so much for joining us. we're talking about a lot of money here too this is a shift of what 15 million dollars yeah yeah it's pretty significant uh definitely not something that we've seen in recent history sure and and how do you think that will impact um schools such as your own yeah i think it's hard to tell exactly um but what we hear from kind of our leaders is that budgets are tight um many of us like me um we're actually going through a merger right now Inver Hills is merging with Dakota County Technical College. That's something that our colleges have both determined was a necessary step in order to preserve the work that we're doing. But that's already an impact we're feeling, right? It's going to result in loss of staff. We'll have to see exactly what that means for services. But those are the types of things that we're concerned about is loss of access to programs for our students, loss of work for our faculty loss of important resources that our students depend on all those kinds of things now i i feel that i need to disclose here that this may or may not affect me as well i'm a student at um st nor or at uh normandale community college i take a music class there um in the music department i you know and they're one of the more successful um community colleges in this state. I mean, my goodness, we had an enrollment increase two years ago of 15%. Last year, it was 7%. This year, it's above 5%. So the enrollment that institutions such as your own in our community colleges, they're thriving at the moment. And there's a lot of research to suggest that it has to do largely with the cost of higher education these days, that there's a good value in our community colleges and technical schools at the moment, right, Nicole? Yeah, I mean, and you hit on that enrollment piece. And I think that's one of the things that's most significant when I look at the data that's been shared. We know that our colleges have, as a whole, had some enrollment declines. But since fiscal year 2016, the colleges as a whole have seen enrollment declines of around 16%. Compare that to St. Cloud State University, which is one of the institutions that's going to benefit from this funds, they've had an enrollment decline of about 40% in that same period. And so many of the faculty that I work with and talk with are really concerned about that and feel like we're being penalized for something that we didn't cause. And we've been continuing to do the work to make the hard decisions to support our students. And instead of being able to invest those funds back into our students to make improvements to our own campuses, now we have to shift money to some of these other institutions. And Nicole, it's my understanding it's not just St. Cloud State, but Bemidji is struggling as well. Yep, yep, that is true. Yep, and I think Bemidji, it's around 22 percent enrollment decline for them. So what's the solution? I mean, administration is calling this a stopgap measure, but I have to believe that there's some concern among faculty such as yourself that how long will the stopgap last? Yeah and what's being proposed right now it says it's anywhere from one to four years and so our biggest concern is that it's not just one year it continues and continues and then in three four years we're looking at number of our institutions that now have been put into a difficult financial position because of this and so so we're really concerned about that as far as solutions you know I don't have all of the answers on that I do know that part of what the system is looking at is potential legislative action, maybe some one-time funding or even ongoing funding that could help mitigate some of these costs. And that's certainly something that I think could help. But yeah, there's a lot of questions definitely going on. As a faculty member, you're already undergoing the consolidation among your school. Do you perhaps think this leads to more consolidation across the state at other campuses. Yeah, well, so what's getting a lot of headlines right now is this kind of short term proposal about taking money from the colleges and giving it to these universities. But happening kind of in the background simultaneously is a broader initiative related to system realignment. And there's a lot of questions floating around. To be honest, we don't have a lot of answers. A couple weeks ago, there was a system wide email that came out from our chancellor that launched this effort. And so I think we're paying a lot of attention to what that means. There's a lot of talk about mergers and closures or consolidations, but right now there's probably more questions than there's answers right now. Yeah, Nicole, enlighten our viewers here for a moment because part of the underlying issues in all of this is declining student enrollment. I mean, not just at some of the four-year colleges, but overall the pool of young adults available to go to a college. I mean, that population has, that demographic has really shrunk in the past 10 to 15 years. There are just not as many students, and more and more colleges are competing for a smaller pool of prospective students, correct? That is correct, yeah. And I think that's an issue that's not just unique to Minnesota. It's a problem in higher education more broadly. I think there's a lot of things, though, that we can do to respond to that, to better meet the needs of our students, to do a better job of keeping the students that we have and supporting them. I think that takes investment and really specific work that needs to be done. I think we can do a lot with some of our adult learners that may be wanting to retrain. So there's opportunities for sure, but yeah, it is a difficult time. Yeah, and lots of opportunities for lifelong learners such as myself, too. I mean, I love my class at Normandale. I really do. And if there's any viewers out there who have ever considered, you know, there's a fun class that I'd like to take or I'd like to learn this new skill or I'd like to pick up an old skill. My goodness, our community colleges and our tech schools have just so many resources for really reasonable prices to go back and enroll. Learning is fun, right? and continue on that pace, I strongly encourage anyone to consider it. If you've got some time and if you've got a desire, there are faculty members like yourself who are just waiting for you to enroll, right? Yeah, no, I mean, obviously I'm biased here representing our faculty, but I think we're some of the best in the business. I know personally the lengths that our faculty will go to help their students and to provide them the level of support that they need. And like you said, our classrooms are full of people from all walks of life, whether it's post-secondary students taking some classes in high school or someone like you who's just looking to come back and do something for the joy of learning. It's kind of fun because my class is a mix of people, like you said, from all walks of life. We have about half the class who are retirees. We got the other half of the class who are traditional college students, 18, 19 years old. And I'm kind of the token middle-aged guy who comes in a suit every day and leaves from class to come directly to work. But it's a joy. And again, I can't emphasize enough the quality of education that we have here in this state. I'm a little biased too. And we have such great educational opportunities here in this state and such great institutions, especially our local tech schools and our community colleges and and that's why there's there's such a um an outpouring of uh shall i say concern over these proposals right now did i did i uh yeah i i think concern and if if you allow me you mentioned specifically our technical schools and um in addition to this proposal that's going to take some money um and give it to St. Cloud State and Bemidji State um there is some an additional proposal that is actually seeking to reallocate funds called leveraged equipment funds. And they're going to reallocate those funds to demolish buildings. And again, primarily buildings at our state universities. Those leveraged equipment funds are critical to our technical programs. They allow our faculty and our administrators at the two-year campuses to use those funds to kind of get matching funds for purchasing equipment that they might need, whether it's lab simulation tools for nursing programs or welding supplies that they may need or robotics equipment. All of those kinds of things are expensive, but really, really critical in the work that we do in order to provide our students with the education that they need. And especially to prepare them for where the workforce is right now and what companies and technologies and equipment that those industries are using. Exactly, exactly. And so for us to be, you know, doing our best and giving our students the tools and the skills that they need to be ready to go right away into the workforce, we need to have that equipment. And by taking money away from these funds, it's really going to harm those students and those programs. And I'm very concerned about that. Yeah, it's an important debate that I know that the state and the community is going to have here going forward. All right, Nicole Beetz, who is Minnesota State College Faculty Executive Committee and works as a counselor at Inver Hills Community College. Thanks so much for spending some time with us here this afternoon, Nicole. Thank you. It was great to be on. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with more here in all day in a moment.