Nysir Proctor
February 23, 2024
For many students at the Community College of Philadelphia, many benefits, services, and subject diversity attract students to study and continue their education here. From the more intimate learning style of the smaller classrooms, the sophisticated professors, and the numerous resources and opportunities. This could be considered on par with many four-year institutions, the college is not lacking in what it can offer its students. The main hook-and-reel for this college though, as it is for many other two-year institutions and vocational schools, is the low cost of tuition.
Though not widely known, the college receives its funding in a way that is set up by fourths, meaning that one-fourth of the total funding comes from the state, another from tuition, some from the city, and lastly through miscellaneous endeavors such as investments by the college. This structure of funding has provided many students, blocked by the demanding fees of a 4-year college to still pursue an education. Recently, this funding method has become a subject of change, concerning students with consequences that come with it.
As of Tuesday, February 6th, State Governor Josh Shapiro initiated his campaign promises towards education and workforce development. One of the major features of that promise was the introduction of a normally unused governance structure in institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania, a performance-based funding model. This system’s design is set up in a way that allocates resources of the state’s budget to universities that can meet a set limit of performance measurements usually in the criteria of graduation rate, credit attainment, and enrollment. Another feature of this design is that with it, the Community College of Philadelphia will potentially fall under a new governance structure than the one already instituted of it and the other 14 state community colleges.
Along with this new structure comes major increase, the proposal being a 15% increase in funding for all Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education schools and community colleges (PASSHE). State-related but independent universities such as Temple, UPitt, Penn State, and Lincoln are expected to receive a portion of this budget as well at a 5% increase. Even with this great news of the passing of this bill there are still downsides and concerns that follow. One of them being that this plan is not expected to be implemented into the fiscal year of 2024 at all, instead during the later months of 2025 even early 2026, as there is still a lot of smoothing over to be done by the current governance board about the upcoming plans.
Besides the date of the implementation of the newly passed bills, the timing for just how long it took for the bill to pass through state legislators has caused a major issue for two-year institutions. Many of the PA community colleges have already resorted to opening lines of credit to cover expenses that tuition and already proposed funding will not be able to match. Qadim Ghani, Vice President of Finance at Montgomery Community College, set out on restructuring a set of deals with various school suppliers as well as cutting out unnecessary cost and opening a loan worth $10 million with a local bank (Sokil). While they are not the only community college that has been forced to take measures such as these, they are one of the most noteworthy due to the high line of credit they require from the bank in the wake of the late funding which they were in line to receive all the way back on July 1st.
After an Interview with Derrick Sawyer who is the Associate Vice President of Budgets and Risk at the college. He was able to provide us with answers to some immediate concerns that the student body shared while also sharing his potential concerns for what we may be at risk of in the upcoming future. To start with the most important concern, from the interview we were able to gather that CCP was able to receive its funding in an approximation of 2 weeks before today’s current date. “We actually received a 2% increase from last year’s funding,” Sawyer had shared in his interview. Due to CCP being a bigger than usual school in terms of enrollment when it comes to community colleges, we have the reserve funds to avoid the use of a financing plan outside of our usual funding sources. The major concerns of Sawyer though were on how “Many things are still in the works with this new structure of performance-based funding, lots have yet to be discussed and there are plenty of kinks to be worked out before we are officially in the clear.” Another thing mentioned that Sawyer had shared his qualms about where, the potential for CCP to fall under a new governance board than the existing one that the college already answers to with the other PA community colleges. This change in boards could potentially put us in the same categories as major state universities when it comes to allocations of funds, something which could put us at risk of lower funds as well if we do not meet the yet to be established performance requirements.
So, as of now we are in the clear but with many things still to be established in the coming months all of this can quickly change and much can be uprooted. The main consequences of something like this happening that we were able to gather from Sawyer were that budgets of the school would be rearranged with funds being taken from others in favor of more essential needs of the college.
There are 3 budgets that CCP divides the funds it receives into with the names of those being the Operating budget, Capital expenses budget, and Student A. The Operating budget, being the largest is also the most important as it handles salaries of all faculty members as well as things such as rent, repairs, technology, and classroom supplies. The capital budget could be considered the funding behind new projects of the school such as renovations, new furniture, and development of completely new facilities. The last one being student activities is exactly as it sounds, it presides over campus programs such as athletics, performing arts, and student support. With any chances of a deficiency in the overall funding of the college, the capital and student activities budgets are at risk as funds will be moved from the formers in favor of the operating budget. This will be risking many areas of engagement for students on campus such as clubs, sports, and special themed programs. More is soon to come through in the following months as ordinances will be formally established around this new performance-based funding structure which the Vanguard will work to keep students up to date on.
If you want to check out, how funding is structured at the Community College of Philadelphia:
To find out more about the Current Governance board that Community College of Philadelphia as well as other PA Community Colleges:
The Independent 
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