College of Southern Nevada tests its limits

J.T. Creedon is 28 years old and functionally homeless.

He doesn’t look like those guys pushing shopping carts down on Main Street, though. He’s wearing jeans, a black leather jacket and black Converse tennis shoes. His hair is combed, face is clean, and he speaks well.

But for Creedon, "functionally homeless" means that he does not, technically, have anywhere to live because he does not, technically, have any money.

With a laugh, he calls his living arrangements "a complete and utter travesty."

He sleeps at one friend’s house for a couple of days, somewhere else for the weekend, whatever he can get, whenever he can get it. He’s a serial couch surfer. He doesn’t have a real job, doesn’t want one, at least not right now.

He’s got too much work to do.

"My priority," Creedon says, "is graduating."

Which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous. Creedon is a student at the College of Southern Nevada, one of the largest community colleges in the western United States. He’s got almost twice as many credits as he needs to graduate. He’s been a student, off and on, for almost a decade.

So hurry it up already, right?

As with most things, it’s not that simple.

Like many CSN students, Creedon took a while to figure things out. The community college serves all kinds, so there is no such thing as a typical CSN student. But it would not be an overgeneralization to say CSN’s students are generally older, poorer, less white and less likely to be from college-educated families than those attending most other higher education institutions.

Fifty-six percent of CSN’s students are first-generation college students, and only 44 percent of the college’s 41,000 students are white.

This year, 76 percent of all CSN students applied for financial aid, up from last year. Of those who applied, 38 percent received some sort of assistance. So far, financial aid applications for next year are up 20 percent, a college official says.

Many students who attend CSN just show up and take a few classes. There are no admissions requirements, which is the way it’s supposed to be at a community college. Anybody who wants in can get in.

And it only costs a couple hundred dollars to take one class. A full-time student will pay about $1,200 per semester beginning in the fall.

Many CSN students don’t know where they’re going yet. Some take a single specialized class, such as a cooking class, maybe. Some stay and get two-year degrees but not all that many. CSN’s graduation rate is below 5 percent, which everybody at the college and outside the school considers terrible. An unknown number of students transfer to four-year schools, especially UNLV.

Others drop out. No one keeps track of what happens to them.

Creedon, departing president of CSN’s student government, was among the dropouts. More than once. But he kept coming back.

Over the decade he has been in and out of CSN, Creedon says he’s come to know the place pretty well. He practically lives there. His job as president — nominally a 12-hour-a-week job that really takes up close to 40 — provides his only income, about $2,100 a semester.

He loves the place.

Same goes for Nevada, where he moved when he was 19.

Except he’s probably going to leave for an out-of-state university.

"I really want to go to a place where it’s a little more stable for the next two years," he says.

He’s applied to universities across the country, from New York to Texas to Washington state. He’s received one acceptance letter and waits to hear from the rest. He also applied to UNLV, but that’s just his safety net in case he doesn’t get in anywhere else.

Creedon really hopes he gets in somewhere else. He says the cuts in Nevada are weakening higher education here.

STAFF HAS BEEN CUT, CLASS SIZES BOOSTED

Cuts have been going on since 2007, when the recession really kicked in. State tax money dwindled, and higher education is an easy target. Not only does it take up about 15 percent of all state general fund spending, it’s the rare government entity that can raise its own money through tuition and fees.

So far, CSN’s administrators have dealt with cuts by eliminating jobs through attrition, limiting part-time instructors and relying on faculty to teach more classes, increasing some class sizes, increasing tuition and limiting overall the number of classes offered.

Staffing is down 5 percent overall, and enrollment is up more than 10 percent since 2007.

And now, more cuts could be coming. Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed a budget that cuts higher education by $92 million in fiscal 2012 and $162 million in 2013 when compared with this year.

Reacting to forecasts of more state revenue than expected, he proposed last week reducing those higher education cuts by $20 million over the two years.

Higher education leaders say that’s not enough, that another $60 million is necessary. Democrats presented an alternative plan last week, too. They proposed cuts less than half of Sandoval’s.

But higher education officials across the state are planning for the worst, the Sandoval cuts, just in case. For CSN, those cuts would mean the loss of $15.5 million next year and $26.8 million the year after that.

CSN already is chronically underfunded. It gets fewer state dollars per full-time student than any other college or university in the state. Its per-student funding is just a bit more than one-third of the University of Nevada, Reno’s, and less than half of Great Basin College’s, a community college in Elko.

That funding includes huge increases in state dollars over the past decade. They have more than doubled at CSN from 2000 to 2010.

No more.

PRESIDENT SAYS TOUGHER CUTS TO COME

To deal with Sandoval’s proposed cuts — about 29 percent in state support over the two years — more drastic measures will have to be taken than have worked in the past, CSN President Michael Richards says.

While the state’s two universities are planning to eliminate programs and lay off hundreds of faculty and staff, that is not the plan at CSN, though some layoffs are likely. But community colleges do not generally have expensive programs as universities do, so eliminating class offerings is a more broad approach.

If the cuts go through, Richards said, the college will have to close virtually all of its satellite centers, which serve rural populations in Caliente, Mesquite, Logandale and other places.

The cuts might also force the closure of the Henderson campus, the smallest of the school’s three main campuses in metropolitan Las Vegas. Henderson has about 6,000 students.

Course offerings would be cut by 28 percent, which would mean there won’t be room for everybody who wants to go to CSN. Richards estimates as many as 13,000 students would be shut out.

Already, the college had to turn away 5,300 students in the fall.

"Had we been able to accommodate those students, our enrollment would have been much higher," Richards says.

While the actual number of students turned away this semester is unavailable, enrollment is down 4.27 percent, the largest drop since 2000 and unusual for a school where enrollment has grown 30 percent in the past decade.

Richards blames the cuts.

Tuition and fee increases and pay cuts would mitigate some of the potential cuts, he says. Higher education officials are proposing a 13 percent fee increase this year and another 13 percent increase next year. Systemwide, that is expected to bring in an additional $72 million over the next two years.

They also are considering a 5 percent pay cut, which would replace a mandatory furlough, equivalent to a 4.6 percent cut. The larger cut is expected to save an additional $14.2 million over two years.

Even with additional revenue, CSN says it could lose as many as 9,300 students over the next two years.

"Every time I say this, people’s eyes glaze over," Richards says. "What that means is 9,300 individuals will not have an institution of last resort to turn to now."

PROFESSOR FEARS LOSING CSN’S MISSION

Bill Kerney gets it. He’s a professor of health related professions at CSN and the chairman of its Faculty Senate.

Faculty are beaten down, he says. Morale is terrible. Most teach at a community college because they love to teach. They can’t imagine a community college not admitting students who want to learn. It is antithetical to the school’s purpose.

"If they can’t come to us, where are they going to go?" Kerney says. "We’re going to be very hard-pressed to fulfill our mission if these cuts are sustained."

That’s why students such as Creedon have been fighting the cuts so hard.

They equate tuition and fee increases to tax increases on the poor, an assertion that critics deny. Tuition and fees are simply that, critics say, user fees.

Still, students have banded together this year like never before. They have rallied, including a huge gathering in Carson City with more than 1,000 participants. They have lobbied legislators and testified before committees.

And they have changed their tune on fee increases. In the past, they have supported them as necessary, but this year students say they won’t support another tuition and fee increase without more state funding for higher education.

Creedon says he thinks about the people who are like he used to be, working dead-end jobs and wondering whether there is something better out there.

What will they do if they can’t even get in to the community college? Will they leave? Will they stay in dead-end jobs and never get an education?

That’s probably what he would have done, he says, if CSN hadn’t been there.

Creedon started at the college without any idea of what he was doing. Soon, he discovered that he liked it. Then he began to love it. When the cuts started, he got involved. He got so involved and became so determined to finish college, he temporarily gave up working to focus on two goals: graduating, and saving CSN from more budget cuts.

He mostly dropped his cynical outlook on life and politics and dived in. While family situations made him drop out, Creedon always figured he’d come back.

He’ll graduate this month with degrees in history and political science, and he’ll leave Nevada.

He’s not sure if he’ll ever come back.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@review journal.com or 702-383-0307.