Here, locally, we can add the failure of Clark County to understand their mission of responding to the community they’re alleged to serve along with an increasing lack of responsiveness to that community when they’re called on it.
The example provided by The Columbian in it’s editorial below is yet another despicable example of putting the dollars of out-of-state tuition ahead of the needs of the people of THIS area.
Clark College’s failure to respond to the queries of The Columbian; the dissembling non-response of the administration of this institution… both of those things give me pause on other issues of concern to the College… issues of funding…. Issues of expansion… issues of construction.
If Clark College refuses to address the needs of THIS community, then I believe THIS community should strive to cease meeting the needs of Clark College.
This type of misfeasance is both inexplicable and inexcusable. And, until properly addressed, I will be an implacable foe of expanding, financing, assisting, building or any other form of support to the College or those who run it.
Frankly, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
In Our View - 'Not My Role'
Sunday, July 3, 2005
Columbian editorial writers
A sign outside the nursing director's office at Clark College says, "The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams." But to sisters Amanda Sitmann and Rebecca Webster of Vancouver, those words, coming from this school, ring hollow.
Their dreams are to follow their mother Carol Webster into nursing. They want to live and work in Vancouver, where they grew up and their family has paid taxes that support state colleges. Now, the sisters are looking for another school, perhaps in another state.
They and other Clark nursing applicants learned last month who among them had been accepted into the highly regarded program's sequence that begins in winter 2006. Webster and Sitmann did not make the cut. Competition was intense, with 389 qualified applicants competing for 40 slots.
The women were disappointed, obviously. But they're also mad. They think it's wrong that 40 percent or more of the slots are going to out-of-state students.
More...
2 comments:
Clark's decision makes perfect sense. In an era of declining state funding for higher education, Washington's universities push their operating costs onto the backs of tuition-paying students; specifically out-of-state tuition paying students. It happened to me when I got my PhD in Washington. You'll note that an out-of-state student pays 4 times the tuition that a WA resident pays. So for the 40 students mentioned, Clark will collect $3948.80 per credit for out-of-staters (16 students * 246.80 per credit) but only $1802.40 (24 * 75.10) from their in-state counterparts. Remember that next time you vote against an education levy or a 0.1% tax increase for Washington schools. If you won't pay for the subsidies supporting in-state students, then schools like Clark won't take them in.
You'll forgive me if I disagree, won't you?
The primary mission of a community college is just that: educate the community.
Thus, Clark's decision, which their response would indicate they have a great deal of, well, for lack of a better term, "shame" over, flies in the face of that mission.
Also, that decision has nothing to do with levies, bonds or what amounted to a 10% sales tax increase... monies that were all slated to go to K-12.
I reiterate: if these people cannot perform their primary mission of educating THIS community, then they need to be replaced with people who can. The taxpayers of this state and this area did not spend tens of millions of dollars of OUR money to educate the children of those who did not share in that burden up front.
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