RE: Question 2: Community College Governance

The mission of the California Community Colleges is to bring the promise of postsecondary education to anyone with the capacity and motivation to learn.  The mission also calls for the system to play an integral role in preparing the State's workforce, a workforce that enables California to have a strong, globally-competitive economy.  Since 1988, the California Community Colleges has been recognized as a system that is part of higher education.

While the job of running the colleges on a day-to-day basis has been assigned to the 72 local governing boards, the job of mobilizing the colleges to serve the overall State interests—-the job of leading the colleges in defined directions the serve the overall societal and economic needs of the State—-is assigned to the Board of Governors.  Much is at stake: the educational goals of 2.5 million students annually; a cumulative $6 Billion annual operating budget; 80,000 employees; and the State's needs to raise levels of educational attainment, meet its workforce needs, and maintain a healthy multicultural democracy.  

While local governing boards run the colleges by establishing the curriculum, hiring employees, and managing the budget, both they and the State are dependent upon the Board of Governors. The Board develops the budget for the system, represents the system before the State, addresses accountability concerns of the State, leads the colleges to address compelling societal and economic needs defined by the State, develops fair rules of resource allocation, enforces laws, and enables the colleges to address challenges and opportunities within the system rather than in the Legislature. 

The draft Master Plan doesn't create the public policy that the Board should be responsible for overall governance (that was done in 1989), but it does propose remedies to the fundamental structural weaknesses that have frustrated achievement of that policy goal.  By separating the Board and Chancellor from status as a state agency, and instead constituting the system as an independent "public trust" like the two university systems, the Plan proposes to give the Board the administrative flexibility and authority to deliver on its mandate--and to be held accountable for the system's success to the people of California.


Christopher Cabaldon