Maryland legislators are considering a budget that cuts $22.6 million in funding across the state’s 15 community colleges, in an effort to reduce debt.
Community colleges just reached full funding under the CADE formula, adopted in 1998 and named after a former state senator, in July 2022. They’ve received 29 cents from the state for every dollar given to the University of Maryland system for the past two years.
But the new budget plan wants to reduce that allocation to 26.5 cents, while giving a five percent funding increase to the University of Maryland institutions overall.
In a hearing last Thursday, Secretary of Budget and Management Helene Grady said the current community college funding level is unsustainable — especially with “critical” investments being made in other areas, like the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.
“The administration had to make some difficult trade-offs, and worked to refocus state government toward funding what we see as the state's most core responsibilities,” Grady said. “This requires reining in some spending that in our view, grew unsustainably during the pandemic years.”
CADE is one of around 30 other areas facing cuts under the new budget. Community college leaders say this will harm the state’s most vulnerable learners, who often come from low-income and marginalized backgrounds.
Sandra Kurtinitis, president of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), worries that she’ll have to raise tuition by $5 per credit — and significantly reduce the tuition-free program that currently serves around 85% of her students.
“We're institutions that have come a long way over the past two years,” Kurtinitis said in an interview with WYPR. “But we need to have the commitment from our state that what we do is valued, what we do is strong. We serve the most vulnerable populations. So it really is addressing a broad, public, civic duty to support community colleges.”
CCBC would lose $4.5 million under the new budget. Kurtinitis says that cost is “a lot for us to absorb.”
“If we get full funding, we can do the things we need to do to address years of underfunding,” she said. “And by that, I mean facilities upgrades, equipment upgrades, staffing upgrades.”
Smaller colleges like Garrett College and Cecil College could lose 21 percent and 13 percent of their budgets, respectively.
Kurtinitis says cutting community college funding is antithetical to state investments in K-12 education under the Blueprint.
“If you bring students up through K-12 with the level and quality of instruction and support that they should have, you can't then send them on to a half-baked institution.”
John Dedie, professor of political science at CCBC, said people often forget all the benefits and programs run by community colleges.
“A lot of people have the misnomer that community college is advanced high school, which it is not,” he said. “We train dental hygienists. We train truck drivers. We do a variety of those occupational training programs that help people get really good jobs right away.”
And those graduates stay local, Kurtinitis said.
“They go right back to their communities where they live, they work, they get a job, they buy a house, they pay taxes, they send their kids to local schools. They don't go back to New York or Massachusetts or California,” she said. “So it's that concept of investing in the state's economy at a local level that I think is worth $22 million.”
State lawmakers still have to vote the budget through the house and senate in order for it to pass.
