By Cliff Cawthon, Special to The Medium
During the pandemic colleges and university students have been hit hard. On Monday, the State House of Representatives’ College, Workforce and Development Committee discussed HB 1318 (SB 5194).
The bill, which is supported by a number of advocacy groups like the Community for Our Colleges Coalition, a coalition of students, faculty from community colleges, the Equity in Education coalition and the Washington Education Association (WEA), will establish racial and social equity improvements in the state’s Community and Technical Colleges.
One of the longstanding equity issues in higher education is in the success and completion gaps by students of color in Community and Technical Colleges (CTC). In Washington State, Black and Latinx students, in particular, when compared to their White counterpart’s lag behind in completion times and rates. In a Seattle Times report in August of 2020, statewide completion rate statewide in community and technical colleges for Black and Native American students saw 26% and 27%, respectively, completing their degrees in four years.
Fernando Mejia, a project manager with Just Strategy, a research, lobbying and strategic organization affiliated with the Community for Our Colleges Coalition, says that only 42 percent of the state’s budget for higher education goes to community colleges and other services that support youth. However, the larger part of the issues is that students of color are not finishing on time. Mejia says that the damage from these disinvestment trends are cyclical.
“Only forty percent of [BIPoC] students are finishing in two years,” says Mejia. “From the students’ perspective you are not tapping into their talent. So [with an associate degree] they can go and get into a four-year program and get a better job, if I don’t have that then I can’t afford to pay higher taxes, spend in my local economy and the state loses that talent and money.”
For the coalition, the solution to this systemic inequity is reversing the underfunding of services aimed at supporting students of color and the Community and Technical College system in general.
The reality for students is that this bill will be a gamechanger for student’s ability to navigate their first steps into the world of higher education.
“This bill touches on many inefficiencies in [higher education] in Washington State, and how the Community College system isn’t adequately equipped to deal with a lot of things,” says Issac Tchao, a former student at Shoreline Community College, who now attends the University of Washington. “Whenever there’s a recession…community colleges have faced massive cuts and…this isn’t about money that’s being taken out of taxpayers [pockets], but money that has been taken away from community colleges.”
According to a financial analysis from the Senate Bill, from 2021-2023 these measures will result in over $33 million being allocated to community colleges and universities, and by 2025 it will be over $38 million.
If passed, the bill would fund support and targeted outreach to low-income communities to help them go to school. Likewise, this would ease standards that would allow undocumented students to access in-state tuition and aid after a year of living in Washington state, thus lifting the three-year state residency requirement that is in place now. Dulce Estrada, who testified in support of the bill, says that Washington State is one of the hardest states for first-generation students to navigate when it comes to getting state financial aid.
According to data from the American Federation of Teachers, “73 percent of underrepresented faculty are in [adjunct] positions” and full-time instructors are overwhelmingly white. The CTC system and universities nationwide are increasingly depending on adjunct labor, which creates precarious working conditions for educators and less ability to spend time with students. Coupled with the faculty pool overall being white and a lack of counselors of color, according to the student activists, creates a disconnect that leaves BIPoC students without mentorship and culturally receptive educators that can cater to their needs.
During the hearing in the House’s College & Workforce Development committee, the opposition to the bill was focused on racial equity measures focusing on hiring more faculty and staff of color. Sarah Davenport Smith, who represents the Family Policy Institute of Washington in opposition to the bill, referenced the failed 2019 referendum to authorize race and gender based affirmative action policies in the state. Smith implied that this would contradict state law established with the 1998 passage of I-200. Smith called the diverse hiring provisions “an overarching government prescription to diversity in all aspects…in particular, college hiring practices.” The Bill report notes that it is permissible for institutions to take diversity into account among several other factors, though it cannot be the deciding factor.
UPDATE: The bill has made its way out of the House of Representative’s College & Workforce Development Committee during their meeting on Wednesday, March 24th. Further committee action may be needed before it is put on the floor of the House for a vote. We will keep you updated right here at seattlemedium.com. For those who are interested in testifying, you can follow this link for more information.
This article is one of a series of articles produced by The Seattle Medium through support provided by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Word In Black, a collaborative of 10 Black-owned media outlets across the country.
