Posted on 07/18/2016 5:37:56 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Having eliminated some teaching positions and still facing a projected budget deficit, a community college in Michigan's Upper Peninsula plans to launch an athletics program. The move is stirring criticism from faculty members who question the administration’s priorities.
Bay de Noc Community College in Escanaba will add men’s and women’s cross-country in the fall of 2017, and then men’s and women’s basketball in the winter. The college president said athletics will be added — on a shoestring basis — as a way to attract students and offset a declining enrollment.
“We need to do something,” said Bay College President Laura Coleman.
Bill Milligan, a faculty member in the English department, criticized the timing of adding athletics when teachers are being laid off.
“We've essentially laid off one of the brightest instructors ever employed by Bay and hired an athletic director instead,” Milligan said in an email. “Enough said about the priorities at Bay right now.”
Enrollment at the college has fallen after a surge of individuals going back to school during the Great Recession. After peaking at 3,215 in 2010-11 enrollment has dropped every year since, falling to 2,074 in 2014-15, a decrease of 35 percent.
Coleman said the college eliminated 11 positions, two of which were faculty.
Bay de Noc also converted a recruiting position into the job of athletic director. The teams' coaches would be part-time employees and the college would play its basketball games at the local YMCA rather than on campus.
Coleman estimated the total cost of adding athletics (including travel) would be $100,000 a year, not including the position of athletic director.
The four sports teams would add as many as 50 students — but only if all the positions were filled by individuals who are not members of the current student body.
“We aren’t going out there and doing football or hockey,” Coleman said. “We want to run a program that will be successful. We didn’t want to do it on the cheap-cheap-cheap nor do we want to be a Big Ten school.”
Milligan was skeptical of claims athletics wouldn’t end up costing the college more money in the end. He expressed concerns about expenses, citing as one example the building where the basketball games would be played, saying the bleachers need to be fixed.
“What concerns me and others is the timing of adding cost into the budget via the sports program at a time the college is laying off full-time faculty and staff — and projecting a budget shortfall of over $1 million,” Milligan said. “The timing simply can't be justified. Period.”
How many staff were actually cut off?
It’s about time student activities are not held hostage by administration and teacher salaries.
Imagine...if kids actually went to schools to LEARN something
I myself went to a CC.
I went originally for auto mechanics and then switched to welding.
One of my welding instructors hired me for the shop he worked at.
A couple of years later, I took some machine shop courses at another CC.
A year or 2 later, I was working in a different shop, from where I had started. I was the youngest welder in the welding dept., of 54 guys. I was next up for Master Welder. Basically, a lead man or set up man. If people had any problems with a machine or fixtures, they came to me to get them straightened out, if there wasn't a Master Welder available. I left before my promotion.
While there, because of my mechanical background and machining background, I could "see" how jigs and fixtures could be altered or rebuilt, for better and faster set ups. A few consolidated 2-3 processes into 1. I would work hand in hand with the model makers to build them, building them from a welders stand point.
Often times I'd get loaned out to the machine shop, to operate certain machines, to help them out of a hole. Then back over to the welding dept. when they got backed up, or the machine shop got caught up.
Today I'm in construction. But my mechanical and machining background still serve me. It allows me to think, to analyse how things work. How to see things in 3 dimensions and to fabricate things to work.
My Sr year of high school, I had no idea what I was going to do after I graduated. My parents were ordinary, low skill, factory workers.
My buddy's dad called me up one day and encouraged me to join him and his son, as they checked out the CC auto program.
All my cousins were just high school grads, with no skills, just working jobs. That's all I knew of.
My buddy's dad changed that for me.
My first job out of college was in a factory as a welder. But in factories, there are workers and then there are welders and machinists and sometimes a few other skilled labors.
The point of the story is, that often one can get a good education at a community college. Whether just courses, to teach you a skill, or a 2 year degree to get you going in the world, or the beginnings of a Bachelor or Masters degree.
As far as sports at a CC? MOST...not all athletes at a CC played high school sports, but were/are not good enough for the next level. CC's allow them to keep "playing", with no real chance for a sports future.
In a school strapped for cash, sports programs are a waste of time and money. They are for people who want to play games. Not get an education.
Why do you need to do something?
Your institution is in an area of declining population in a country where people are no longer having as many children as they did when students were competing for colleges. Now it's the other way around.
A public institution needs to be responsive to the area it serves. If that means downsizing when demand decreases, then do it.
This reminds me of a situation in my old hometown in northwestern Wisconsin. In the mid 80s, I believe it was, the local agencies could not fill the government assisted housing that was available in town. Capacity exceeded need.
Great you might think. But, no.
Instead, the agencies took out adds in the Milwaukee and Chicago newspapers advertising the availability of public housing in that town.
It's not hard to imagine what happened.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.