By Brittany Murray
BRIDGEPORT — Some members of the new Blue Ribbon Commission are discouraged by the absence of community colleges in Gov. Jim Justice’s plan to increase higher education efficiency.
The commission held its organizational meeting Friday at the Bridgeport Conference Center, and not a single representative of any community college in the state was present.
“How do you not include community colleges, the vocational education in public education?” said state Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion. “It’s all a systemic feeder system. It’s life-long learning, and I think if we concentrate on the four-year higher education institution, we’ve missed a golden opportunity to look at the whole picture.”
Prezioso charged that the Blue Ribbon Commission will be a “colossal waste of time” if community colleges are ignored for their role in workforce development.
“We need a complete education system from preschool through all of our professional programs, and if you’re going to look at this systematically you’ve got to bring in these folks,” Prezioso said after the meeting.
“There are certain situations where the community colleges are tied to some of the four-year institutions, and by not looking at them, we’re going to do a tremendous disservice.”
Prezioso is a retired educator who now represents a senatorial district that includes Pierpont Community & Technical College.
“So I know how important it is, and for a lot of the jobs in West Virginia, we have to have a strong community college” (presence), he said. “If it’s not going to be a part of this process, we’re kidding ourselves.”
Tasked with how to prevent duplication of costs and programs, Fairmont State President Dr. Mirta Martin agreed that presidents and reps from two-year colleges must be heard.
“How can we have a true, new model for 21st century education in West Virginia, when we’re not looking at every single provider of higher ed?” Martin said.
Martin and Prezioso have larger goals for the Blue Ribbon Commission, largely dealing with funding.
Prezioso has chaired legislative education and finance committees and admits that finding a legitimate funding formula for higher ed is difficult.
“I’ve sat on various committees looking at funding formulas and none of them have come to fruition,” he said. “What happens is there are certain institutions that are paid more and get more revenues from the state and some that don’t get as much, and in order for that to even out, you’re going to have to get a funding formula that puts more money into the system or takes from those institutions that are getting more money and sort of even it out.”
When it comes to budget cuts, Prezioso said public education is almost always the first to suffer.
“I resent the fact that we go around the state and say that education is broke, because we produce some quality individuals, but they have to go out of state to get a job once they complete a degree because there’s no jobs here,” he said. “It’s very difficult to grow an economy when you don’t have those jobs, and we’ve tried to do that with our tax structure and some of our incentives from business.”
The key issues the commission outlined were affordability, accessibility, retainment and graduation rates — all of which essentially boil down to cost.
Martin said 80 percent of the students who drop out of Fairmont State do so because they can no longer afford tuition.
“If this commission were to create a more efficient and equitable distribution of funds where we look to avoid the duplication of overhead costs, and then we redirect those savings to the students, then we keep the students engaged in higher ed, we get the students to graduated,” she said. “And then with that educated workforce, then we’re really making a shift into the future of this state.”
