MCC continues work to ‘rightsize’ budget

After years of declining enrollment, Monroe Community College in early May announced plans to phase out some faculty members in efforts to preserve the long-term financial health of the institution. Though collaborations with faculty leadership have resulted in voluntary incentives, the work to manage the college’s budget is far from over.

“MCC is not in a crisis; we are at a course-correction point to build capacity for our long-term sustainability so that we can continue delivering high-value programs and services that place more Monroe County and New York residents into good-paying jobs,” says MCC President DeAnna Burt-Nanna,

The May announcement brought protests and pushback from MCC’s Faculty Association and students. The parties then convened to establish a unified solution over the course of a couple of months and discuss concerns regarding layoff proposals. (The number of jobs at stake was never made public.) Last month, MCC’s Board of Trustees announced voluntary retirement and separation opportunities for eligible full-time teaching faculty.

“These conversations have supported our ongoing commitment to shared governance, honoring our collective bargaining agreement, and reducing adverse impacts on MCC students and our workforce,” the MCC board said.

A decade of declining enrollment lies at the heart of MCC’s decision to cut jobs. However, its efforts to achieve savings are less a product of economic hardship, and more of a focus on “rightsizing” for the long term, college officials say. 

In its initial statement on faculty job cuts, the college called attention to its dedication to aligning faculty and staff to most effectively support the needs of its student body. 

“MCC also needs to eliminate reliance on the College’s fund balance to meet the needs of annual operations to ensure the fiscal health of the institution and the responsible use of tuition dollars and public support,” it stated.

“Our work related to protecting our institution’s long-term financial health is far from over,” according to the Board of Trustees’ statement. “Still, we are confident these measures will have a marked positive impact on the College and students.”

Community colleges across New York have seen declining enrollment since the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of students at MCC declined sharply from 2012 to 2022, with fall enrollment dropping to 8,283 from 17,296. In 2023, enrollment rose to 8,530.

MCC’s operating budget for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31 is $111.5 million compared with $123.8 million in 2012.

“MCC has constantly and carefully monitored our budget, and of SUNY’s 30 community colleges, we have one of the most vital fiscal positions,” Burt-Nanna says. “We are pleased that over the last three years, MCC’s enrollment reflects more stability and a modest enrollment increase, which are expected to hold this fall.”

With concerns over the future of state and county funding and what student services might look like in the years ahead, the institution has emphasized the need to be proactive before the situation grows dire. 

“We take seriously the public’s trust and investment in our college,” Burt-Nanna says. “This is why we are honing in with a laser focus on critical capacity-building work while time is on our side to make adjustments for (our) long-term fiscal sustainability for the success of MCC students and our mission for the good of our community.”

The Faculty Association made some concessions. The group stated its understanding for “cost-saving measures which will minimize the reliance on our fund balance in the future.” 

Their statement, however, also emphasized their position that independent of preserving financial health, faculty layoffs should be a last resort for the institution.

“I would say that it is a combination of declining enrollment and concerns around funding,” says Bethany Gizzi, president of the MCC Faculty Association, of MCC’s financial situation—the college is funded through student tuition, and money from Monroe County and New York.

“Historically, New York State has underfunded community colleges,” Gizzi observes. “They’re really not living up to their obligation to fully fund community colleges, and that has been a challenge for many, many years, not just recently. 

“But, of course, with the impact of declining enrollment,” she adds, “the concern is that we don’t have any guarantees around what the future of state funding is going to be.”

Gizzi says the initial decision to lay off faculty made sense because it was a response to growing budget concerns.

“What they’re looking for is a more permanent savings rather than just reducing a cost (temporarily) … and it’s true that some of the items that (the Faculty Association) proposed are temporary fixes,” she says. 

For instance, the association proposed a ban on funding for travel and no additional expenses for items unrelated to students or student success. What the group would do, Gizzi says, is give the college time to reassess priorities—identifying those of which should be the opportunities students receive, no matter what.

“The concern with (faculty layoffs) is that by reducing full-time faculty, even assuming that you could replace some of the full-time faculty with adjuncts, the consequence is going to be that there will be fewer course offerings,” Gizzi says. “Had the college moved forward with layoffs, the less opportunity students would have had to pursue an education that fits any of their needs.”

“People are MCC’s most valuable resource, so we do not take lightly a decision to reduce staffing unless warranted and without compromising students’ ability to succeed,” Burt-Nanna says. “Our shared governance processes include agreed-upon procedures by which collegewide consultation is used to inform organizational restructuring proposals, among other things.”

The college’s restructuring plans involved three phases of eliminating excess spending, beginning with a reorganization to combine academic and student services in 2022, eliminating some administrative positions and enhancing efficiencies. The second phase included a voluntary separation agreement offered to qualifying faculty members in 2023. As the college proposed and then reversed faculty layoffs, it has reiterated its faith in these rightsizing efforts through student success. 

“In Phase I, we thoughtfully and successfully consolidated resources across two of the college’s most prominent divisions and it did result in cost savings,” Burt-Nanna says. “More importantly, it has positively impacted student success, as can be seen in year-over-year increases in MCC student outcomes like rates of their retention and graduation, and the reversal of historic enrollment declines. More than 1,400 students are members of the MCC Class of 2024, a (4.4 percent increase in awarded degrees) from the previous year.”

Gizzi recalls MCC’s frequent evening and evening and weekend classes. Now, those courses need to get enough students for an evening or weekend option.

“Should those classes then be eliminated as part of budget cuts, students who could only enroll for those courses would inherently be shut out,” Gizzi says. “There is such a thing as becoming too efficient in our master schedule where we jam it down and make it so small in terms of what we offer that we then are missing out on a number of populations of students that we might otherwise get if we had a more expansive master schedule. And the only way we can do that is if we have more faculty.”

Burt-Nanna stresses that “people are MCC’s most valuable resource, so we do not take lightly a decision to reduce staffing unless warranted and without compromising students’ ability to succeed.” 

MCC’s administration cites a minimum goal of a $3 million reduction in the college’s operating expenses. Points of interest in decreasing reliance on funding include: 

■ an annual budget process with input from stakeholders;

■ independent third-party annual financial audits; 

■ regular monitoring, assessment and reporting on institutional progress;

■ making informed and strategic decisions whether to backfill vacant positions or authorize the creation of new ones;

■ maintaining frequent communication given strong labor-management relations;

■ keeping the Board of Trustees well-informed of the institution’s financial health; and

■ exercising internal review to highlight potential areas for cost reduction.

Yet across the aisle lies an understanding that the work necessary to prolong the services that benefit students requires diligent examination of the resources employed by the college in view of its budget. 

Restructuring amid financial woes is not exclusive to MCC alone. SUNY Clinton Community College has announced plans to move its operations to SUNY Plattburgh’s campus by the 2025-2026 academic year, citing similar trends in enrollment and funding. In 2022, SUNY Broome Community College explored an integration with Binghamton University that could have merged the operations of both institutions. 

“Stabilization of enrollment helps our fiscal position, but it does not reverse the effects of historic enrollment declines over a decade without proportionate and strategic adjustments to MCC’s workforce,” MCC officials say, as they further commit to independent annual review of their fiscal health. 

This review, says Gizzi, needs to be more thorough.

“We need to do that assessment and evaluation of what program offerings we have and what program offerings we should have and need to continue to support before we can make decisions about where we can afford to reduce faculty,” she says. “I do recognize certainly that reducing the number of employees is an obvious and easy way to get long-term savings, but it doesn’t always work that way unless you are really understanding the impact of how the elimination of certain positions are going to impact the workload in other ways or impact the services.”

Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon intern, a senior at the University of Rochester and a member of the Beacon Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort. The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. Submissions to the Letters page should be sent to [email protected].