Comments about the California Community Colleges
A Conversation with Tish McNamara and Joseph Giroux
September 10, 2003
Postscript: After reviewing draft notes, Joe Giroux observed that the technology transfer was successful, but in retrospect he would have had the five installations done immediately by someone familiar with the software and subsequently study the details of installation and operation.[1] Tish McNamara provide a copy of internal correspondence from the Chancellor’s Office that confirmed her account of what changes had taken place in California. Excerpts are included as an Appendix.
At a meeting on the California Community Colleges eTranscript project, Tish McNamara and Joseph Giroux had some comments about the budget impacts on the colleges. They are the consultants that have been moving the electronic transcript project forward from vision through a five-campus on-line real-time pilot exchange..
Tish McNamara said the Chancellor’s Office budget had been sharply reduced. Several years ago the Chancellor’s Office had about 300 staff members; now the number is less than 150. Additional reductions of 20 to 25 positions this year are likely. She said more important than the number of positions was the loss of expertise. There some issues—like foreign students—for which the Chancellor’s Office no longer has anyone familiar with the issues or their history.
She said the impact on administration and information technology had been severe. In order to meet the needs of increased enrollments, there have been no faculty reductions.[2] All of the positions lost are in administration. No positions are being filled. She cited one case where the Director of Admissions one week became Director of Admissions and Career Counseling the following week, and the Director of Admissions, Career Counseling, and Enrollment Management several weeks later as two staff members took retirement. (And, as she observed, with no increase in salary). Tish said the typical California community college lost 15 to 20 administrative positions.[3] Information technology is both especially hard hit—since the positions of those leaving are not filled—and many IT staff have worked long enough to take early retirement.
Tish is concerned about a plunge in morale as staff try to both accommodate increased workload—especially projects like SEVIS this summer—and increased enrollment. Uncertainty is causing some of the most qualified to seek other employment. Even if positions could be filled, the expertise of those who had worked several years at the colleges could not be replaced.
Joseph Giroux said this has a significant impact on new technology, such as the Linux/Apache/Tomcat implementations to support uPortal. He said most colleges would not be able to implement real-time electronic transcripts at their campus. He felt that a central service would be needed by many colleges, and separate installations—server and software—would be required to support electronic transcripts in others.[4] He thought the student information systems, which can or must be able to support a California Community Colleges flat file, would produce a file that would be transferred to a separate on-line system and then converted to the XML transcript format. In the pilot projects the most frequent problem was configuration of the various software components. Many of the components are version-sensitive.
Joseph also pointed out that training in new technology is not feasible because mission critical activities exceed current capabilities. Based on his experience, it would take several weeks for someone unfamiliar with Web Services technology to become sufficiently knowledgeable to “run electronic transcripts” and that person would need access to technical support for initial configuration assistance and subsequent diagnostic support for version problems.
Tish said there are no funds for out of state travel and most districts restrict travel to the use of district vehicles—no overnight meetings. Many of the coordinating meetings of the CISOs (Chief Information Systems Officers) are no longer held and Chancellor’s Office presentations are meagerly attended.
Although additional investment in information technology could perhaps reduce workload, that investment “just can’t happen” under current budgets.
Appendix
E-Mail from California Community Colleges Chancellor Tom Nussbaum
to the Chief Executive Officers of the California Community Colleges
-----Original Message-----
> From: Nussbaum, Tom
> Sent:Friday, November 07, 2003 5:16 PM
> To:ceo-all
> Subject:Weekly Email Update
It has been a week of highs and lows.
…
On Wednesday, I opened my doors to begin meeting with staff who will be laid off on January 1st. I started the process of calling neighboring community college districts to set up special linkages. I called my highest level contacts in the few state agencies that somehow are still in a hiring mode. And, I also read the comprehensive report that the Department of Finance had submitted to the Legislature regarding the reduction of funding and positions for all the various state agencies. To my surprise and dismay, I saw that many agencies--some very large--had minimal reductions in positions and operating budgets. I saw that our tiny little agency of about 175 employees was going to be laying off 25 employees, while many agencies three to five times our size were losing just a handful of positions. I saw from the Sacramento Bee reports that the total layoff of state employees was going to be in the neighborhood of 2,000 employees. With a total state workforce of more than 300,000 employees, a lay off of 2,000 employees onstitutes
less than 1% of the workforce. I couldn't understand how our agency could be in the position of laying off almost 15% of its employees--especially when we had already given up about 55 vacant positions the past two years.
…
1. Layoffs:
Over the past two years, funding for the agency has been reduced by about 30%, from $21 million to about $15 million. While we employed 235 full-time staff in 2002, we have received a variety of edicts to scale down. For 2003-04, we lost 14% of our state funding at the beginning of the fiscal year; and recently we've been directed to reduce another 16%, plus 12% from our other sources of funds. The bottom line is that we've already shed about 55 positions by giving up vacant positions and having people voluntarily leave the agency. Now we're out of options. We must layoff 25 staff to comply with directives of the Department of Finance. The effective date of the layoff is January 1, 2004.
For any of you who can, I'm requesting your help. If you have openings, or, if you are interested in seeing the resumes of staff who are going to be laid off, please let me know. I'll forward your message to our Personnel Department, and we'll set up the appropriate communication. We are in a position to forward information electronically, and can get materials to you immediately.
Jim Farmer11 October 2003
[1] The installation problems were not the electronic transcript, but rather the installation of Linux, Apache, Tomcat, and uPortal. This requires careful coordination of versions to become operational. Professional installation takes one to two consulting day, but does not include a technology transfer.
[2] She cited two instances where the faculty unions were given the alternative of salary reductions and no staff reductions or staff reductions; in both cases salary reductions were not accepted.
[3] She cited Santa Rosa Community College as typical; the college reported opening fall 2000 enrollment of 27,020 students.
[4] Both Datatel and SCT said their student information systems will have the capability to produce XML transcript records, but have not given a specific time. If funded, the California Community College eTranscript project would precede Datatel and SCT support of a XML transcript and SOAP messaging. The California Community College and proposed PESC XML transcripts are not identical. The California Community College specification has additional information and different tags and data element specifications than the subsequently available PESC specification.