Doing More With Less:

SCC Faces FTE Shortfall

Jonathan Lavigne

News Editor

When planning the next financial year for Shoreline Community College (SCC), administration officials did not expect the full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment to drop so low and jeopardize the budget.

A full-time equivalent (FTE) is a student attending SCC with at least 45 credits per year. It doesn’t have to be three quarters in a row, as long as it falls in the scholastic year which is from Summer Quarter to Spring Quarter. In calculating the FTE, two students who each have 25 and 20 credits in a certain year respectively are added to form on FTE enrollment. Running Start students are not calculated in the FTE’s.

What an FTE student equals is money. That’s the amount of money that the government gives us at the beginning of the year. Each school is assigned a certain target that the college must meet. In 2003-04, SCC had an allocation of funds for 5183 FTE’s. SCC exceeded the allotted amount, signing up 5291 FTE’s, 102 percent of its target. Beating the allocated amount means additional funds for the next year and a slight raise in the allocation FTE’s for the next year.

Judy Yu of the Public Information Office suggested that due to a slump in the economy, more students enrolled into community colleges. As the economy righted itself, students began taking fewer classes and went back to the work force? which is what happened this year.

SCC had an allocation of 5220 FTE’s for the 2004-05 year. The amount of FTE’s calculated for the year that just took end is 4895 FTE’s. That represents 94 percent of the allocated target. The state uses a two-year rolling average as their basic measure. So if the excess from the 2003-04 year is added with the 2004-05 year, we have reached a cumulative average of slightly below 98 percent.

Economically, this does not mean that the school will lose mass amounts of funding. To access “New Growth Funding” we need to reach the target of 98 percent, of which we are under by the slightest of margins. “New Growth Funding” is additional income and funding that can be used in expanding the facilities to accommodate an even larger amount of student population, of in this case, FTE’s.

Right now, with the two-year 97.87 percent averaging, we fail to qualify for the “New Growth Funding.” But we will not incur any penalties because we yet remain above the 96 percent funding penalty line.

But the problem with FTE’s isn’t only here at SCC; it’s all across the state. Enrollment in the Washington State community and technical colleges is down by 17 percent. The growing job market is highly considered to be the cause behind this drop as is a recovery from recent recessions is under way. The enrollment of FTE’s across the state for this year is seven percent lower than last year. Some other community colleges who are below the 100 percent target are Highline Community College, Lower Columbia Community College and Peninsula Community College. The results of such a downfall of enrollment will surely be felt in the year to come. A shortfall in enrollment also means a shortfall in tuition. The estimated amount budgeted was $9,551,696, but according to recent re-calculations, the budget is approximately $850,000 short, according to an online memo published by the public information office of SCC. Yu speculated that the drop in FTE’s could be influenced by the increasing costs of tuition.