With an enrollment that at times has topped 5,000 students, Concord’s NHTI is New Hampshire’s flagship community college. But in the wake of the surprise layoff of 10 faculty members, the flags that measure morale are at half-staff, the course of the college unsteady, the people at the helm new and untried in New Hampshire waters, the logic behind the layoffs unexplained.
Above it all sails the admiralty, the executives of the office of the chancellor, who oversee the state’s seven community colleges. They, and the presidents of the colleges, continue to dine well on sumptuous salaries while faculty members, the majority of them poorly paid adjuncts, must make do with short rations.
The administrators of the state’s community colleges, the trustees who oversee them and NHTI’s newly installed president, Gretchen Mullin-Sawicki, owe NHTI’s students, faculty and the taxpayers whose representatives just months ago substantially increased funding for the colleges an explanation.
Earlier this year, when seeking a funding increase, the system’s chancellor, Ross Gittell, told lawmakers that additional money would allow the system to freeze tuition, maintain staffing levels and increase the level of full-time versus part-time faculty. Now, at NHTI, the opposite has happened.
Among those who will be let go during the Christmas season are all three of the school’s senior librarians, veteran faculty members whose classes were oversubscribed and the head of a unique program that assists hundreds of students whose first language is not English. That program, founded by faculty member Dawn Higgins, made NHTI a destination for new Americans eager to better themselves.
The chancellor’s office claims that the layoffs were prompted by an unforeseen decline in NHTI’s enrollment. The statement is dumbfounding. The demographic decline in college-age students has been evident for years, as has the knowledge that community college enrollments decline when jobs are plentiful. The chancellor’s previous profession was economic forecasting. Who are they kidding?
Without assistance from the school’s Cross-cultural Education and English for Speakers of Other Languages Department, many students, among them refugees for whom English is a second, third or fourth language, will transfer or drop out. That will only worsen the enrollment decline. The contention, by a spokesperson for the university system, that a lone clerk, tutors and a student club will make up for the loss of the department is laughable. The loss of veteran faculty members who mentored students and new faculty puts the welcoming culture of the college at risk.
We sympathize with NHTI President Mullin-Sawicki, who may not have known what was in store when she took the job, but nonetheless expect an answer. Can any or all of the cuts be restored by making other economies?
We ask of the system’s trustees, how did the community college system become so top-heavy? Gittell’s nearly $290,000 per year salary is twice that of the next highest paid person in the chancellor’s office, where 10 people make over $100,000 per year. Mullin-Sawicki’s $170,000 salary is in line with those of the system’s other college presidents. The standard explanation, that high executive salaries are necessary to land talented leaders who can attract money and swell endowments, can’t explain the discrepancy in pay between the system’s administrators and staff.
Earlier this year, the governor and Legislature increased funding for the community college system by $16 million, or 15%, in part on the premise that the additional money would save jobs. At least some of them rightly feel duped. Two years ago, a performance audit by the Legislative Budget Office faulted the system for unclear fiscal policies and lines of authority, and questionable spending practices. The surprise NHTI layoffs and flimsy explanation for them suggest that the system’s difficulties with planning and decision-making continue to exist.