Do Community Colleges Need to be More Global?

Plesae scroll down to your SCUP Link, below this notice about SCUP–45.

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

Lots of community college news this week, as the annual gathering of the American Association of Community Colleges(AACC) takes place in Seattle. Note that The Chronicle of Higher Education is doing large-scale reporting from the conference, although most of the reports require subscription or a pass.

One area of special interest is the issue of whether or not community colleges are doing enough for their students, to prepare them for the global marketplace. David Molz of Inside Higher Ed reviews some of what he learned in this area. As well, this slide show by Natalie J. Harder of Patrick Henry Community College (VA) displays the results of a large survey she conducted about community college internationalization efforts. From Molz's report:

A 2006 American Council on Education survey on internationalization in higher education – examining whether institutions offered programs like study abroad or courses with a global focus and other variables – gave community colleges a low score of 0.68 on a 4.0 scale. Harder discovered that when the individual institutions are broken out, rural community colleges fare considerably worse than suburban and urban community colleges. She also found that institutional support from the administration, in terms of both dollars and decision making, was the largest predictor of internationalization of the curriculum.

Harder has been slow to win support for her ideas on her own campus. She explained that faculty and some administrators cannot always see the benefit of making such changes.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tempe, AZ - Step II and Step III

Terms of Engagement: Men of Color Discuss Their Experiences in Community College

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

This 70-page report is freely downloadable at this link. There is also an executive summary. From that summary:

Community colleges provide access to higher education for millions of Americans who might not otherwise be able to pursue it. However, despite the pivotal role these institutions play in promoting social equity, they continue to struggle with low student persistence and completion rates, particularly among male students of color. It is this dilemma that spurred Lumina Foundation to launch the Achieving the Dream initiative in 2003 as a bold national effort to improve student outcomes and reduce achievement gaps at community colleges.

This study draws on the experiences of 87 African-American, Hispanic, and Native American men who were enrolled in developmental math courses at four Achieving the Dream institutions to find out more about what affects the success of men of color in community college. The fieldwork explored how students’ experiences in their high schools and communities, as well as their identities as men of color, influenced their decisions to go to college and their engagement in school. The students offered their perspectives in their own words in three rounds of focus groups and interviews during the 2007-08 academic year.

Key findings include: Motivations for Going to College, Encounters with Prejudice, and Identities as Men of Color.

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SCUP's Planning Institute: Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers while you engage in one of the three SCUP Planning Institute Steps. In addition to being offered on demand, on campuses to teams of campus leaders, the institute steps are also offered to all professionals at varying times and venues. Currently scheduled are:

• May 22–23, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• July 10, Minneapolis, MN - Step I (in conjunction with SCUP–45)
• October 2, Ann Arbor, MI - Step I
• January 21–22, Tuscon, AZ - Step II and Step III

Interview: Martha Kanter (US Department of Education) on Educating a Nation

Oh, no! You won't be getting a printed SCUP–45 Preliminary Program in the mail this year. Instead, SCUP is going green and regularly updating this digital version (PDF), which you can download at any time.

Check it out! You don't want to miss higher education's premier planning conference, and your one chance this year to assemble with nearly 1,500 of your peers and colleagues: July 10–14, Minneapolis.

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SCUP Link

An interview from Business Officer:

When she took her first higher education job in California's Silicon Valley in the late 1970s, notes Martha Kanter, “it was a time of tremendous demographic change.” Thousands of returning Vietnam War veterans needed career training, while waves of Vietnamese immigrants and an ever-expanding Hispanic population were reshaping the state's educational needs.

Kanter worked on behalf of the evolving multicultural state in a variety of positions in the 100-plus-campus community college system, most recently as chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. Becoming under secretary in the U.S. Department of Education—the first community college leader to serve in this position—builds on her life's work of putting education in reach of a nation with increasingly diverse learning needs. In this interview with Business Officer, Kanter discusses the Obama administration's education strategy.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Community Colleges as Economic Saviors

From Ann McClure in University Business magazine:

“Never in my life would I have expected community colleges to be called potential saviors of the economy,” says George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. “When the downturn started and people were being laid off, community colleges sent teams into companies to talk to workers about their options,” he explains. The importance of community colleges progressed from there.

As the recession drags on and more people turn to higher ed as a way to weather the storm, community colleges are increasingly in demand. “I think we are going to drive this economy back to where it needs to be,” says Mary Spangler, president of Houston Community College. Applications are up across all sectors of higher ed ranging from graduate school down, but community colleges are getting a double dose from unemployed adults looking for new skills as well as traditional age students looking to save money. According to AACC data, over the past two years, part-time enrollment at community colleges has increased 17 percent, while full-time enrollment increased 24 percent. “To have double-digit growth across the country in two years is incredible,” Boggs notes.

Meanwhile, four-year institutions aren’t exactly slacking in the area of economic revitalization, says George Mehaffy, vice president for academic leadership and change at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. He points to the University of Washington, Tacoma, citing a new building in an abandoned warehouse area, leading to rehabilitation of the area. All sectors of higher ed are changing their perception of their role in the community to being a steward of place, he says. “Thirty years ago, if people had said the university should be concerned about economic recovery, some faculty would have fainted,” Mehaffy says. “But that has changed.”

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
• April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"

Rural Community Colleges and Federal Funds

President Obama is setting a goal for the US to have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020. It looks like that calls for annual increases of 5-6% in total numbers of degrees granted, state by state. That's quite a challenge. The Rural Community College Alliance (RCCA) and the DOE recently convened a meeting about the unique needs of rural community colleges.

Community college leaders told the audience that their needs diverge in important ways from those of suburban and urban community colleges. Though all community colleges are suffering as states nationwide tighten their budgets, rural community colleges must deal with special challenges, the college leaders said. Expenses that might seem paltry at other institutions, such as facing a bill of $55,000 to replace a computer lab, as one rural Arkansas community college is, can prove insurmountable, the college officials said. In small towns, there are few opportunities for partnerships with private businesses. Faculty members are paid less. And even when rural community colleges do obtain grants, they are often functioning at capacity, so they have nowhere to put students or equipment for new or expanded programs.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Driving Your Budget Message

Writing in University Business, president John J. "Ski" Sygieski of Mt Hood Community College (and chair-elect of the American Association of Community Colleges) shares a few useful items about how to best communicate about budget issues:

We’ve all heard the phrase “communication is a two-way street,” and in the best of times, that street is wide open, allowing communication to pass freely between individuals. However, when budget crises arise or times otherwise get tough, the street seems to narrow. People get nervous, and there is much more anxiety involved in the communication process. If the street is suddenly closed because administration is fearful of communicating bad news, there is a massive traffic jam and accidents and fatalities begin to occur. Whether good or bad, institutions must embrace the “communication is a two-way street” philosophy and stay connected with their constituents.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

After Katrina, Delgado Community College Slowly Climbs Back

Delgado Community College leaders have had a rough road to repairing their campus. For one thing, federal funds were allocated based on the original cost of facilities and equipment, not replacement cost. And post-Katrina building codes created more expense. Then, of course, the recession hit. And the chancellor says it's hard to compete for state funding with the big institutions. In her article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Katherine Mangan writes:

It's a scene one might have expected months—even a year—after the 2005 hurricane, which devastated New Orleans and forced most local colleges to close for the fall semester. But this August will mark the storm's fifth anniversary, and only now is the state's oldest and largest community college able to move ahead with reconstruction.

Seventy percent of the buildings on Delgado's campus were damaged by floods and wind, and as the spring 2010 semester begins, 30 percent of the building space is still unusable. Still, students are coming in droves, looking for affordable ways to retool their skills and find work in a city that, like the college, is still in recovery mode.

"Last fall we had to turn away around 1,500 people because we couldn't turn another closet into a classroom," says the chancellor, Ron D. Wright. "That was the most distressing thing I had to do. I've never told anyone they couldn't come."

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

New Plan for '21st Century Maricopa'

In an article titled Efficiency from Incompetence, David Moltz, writing in Inside Higher Ed, examines tensions in and around the Maricopa Community College District. Maricopa's board of directors hired external consultants for $1.4M and has asked its chancellor to review for implementation the many changes in the resulting plan, which is titled "21st Century Maricopa." There are many interesting dimensions to the circumstances. SCUPers will be interested in looking at the plan and its supporting documents. According to Molz, tensions are so high that many thought the consultants would be hired for the plan's implementation, but the board has charged the chancellor with the redesign of the entire district. From Moltz's report:

Months after it was chastised by an independent panel for displaying “a consistent lack of civility” and creating “a climate of fear and mistrust,” the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District has asked its chancellor to review and possibly implement a sweeping series of recommendations to improve the “efficiency” of the Arizona system.

The plan to redesign the district, marketed under the moniker “21st Century Maricopa,” is the result of $1.4 million worth of Alvarez & Marsal consulting work requested by the governing board last summer. The request, however, was made before the college district’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, encouraged an independent panel to examine an anonymous complaint it received alleging that the Maricopa board had put the district’s accreditation at risk by severely micromanaging educators.

The board’s hiring of outside consultants to weed out redundancies in the district and find further ways to save money is viewed by many local observers as a slight against Maricopa's leadership.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Transforming Brutalist Architecture With Student and Local Artwok

A new Innovation Showcase report from the League for Innovation in the Community College is about using student and local art to soften and transform Lane Community College's college's otherwise bland architecture from the 1960s:

Lane’s learning environment, like many college campuses built in the late 1960s, is classic Brutalist architecture: bare exposed concrete. In a recent survey, students overwhelmingly commented that they experience the Brutalism as austere, cold, drab, and gloomy, especially during the gray drizzly days of a Eugene, Oregon winter. Some likened it to learning in a parking garage!

To help mitigate this experience, a series of efforts have been initiated by the Art on Campus Committee. Prior to the creation of the print collection, a painting collection and a commercial art collection were pulled out of storage and mounted throughout the main campus. An invitational sculpture exhibit was held and a number of pieces were purchased and put on permanent display. Two sculpture faculty members, also members of the Art on Campus Committee, offered several classes that created public artwork. Traditional Japanese carvers were invited to mentor students for a wood sculpture course that resulted in a large joint outdoor sculpture. A metal sculpture class created a multipiece work for the bus stop that garnered partial funding from the bus company. A stunning stone piece now stands in front of the administration building, the outcome of a two-term sculpture course.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Planning and Managing Change at the College of Southern Maryland

"A Framework for Leading Change Through the Lens of Student Success" is the title of this League for Innovation Learning Abstract. In it, Irvin Clark III, Jody Simpson, Charlene Newkirk, and Debra Wyvill describe how the College of Southern Maryland used Kotter's eight stage process in the planning for and creation of its Learning Communities Program.

Achieving a fall-to-spring retention rate of over 81 percent for learning community participants was just one of several successful outcomes that provided an impetus to our efforts. This retention rate was instrumental in allowing SEMC to establish itself and champion the success of the LPC. The subcommittee sought to illustrate to the college community the positive impact of the program in such areas as student retention, collaboration between academic and student affairs, curriculum development, outcomes assessment, and budget development. This was accomplished, in part, through presentations, reports, and marketing literature. In particular, we presented at two conferences and several collegewide committee meetings. We also worked with institutional research to develop a comprehensive report, and created marketing literature highlighting the success of the LPC. Furthermore, our focus on promoting a culture of communication, transparency, and assessment allowed us to successfully articulate the effectiveness of the program within the organizational culture of CSM.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Crisis in Florida Community Colleges?'

SCUP–45 offers CPEs for CPAs.

By Robert A. Jones in National Crosstalk: A very close look at Florida community colleges that begins with a rather exciting drama about the overloading of online registration at Miami-Dade College on June 17, 2009, but the bottom line is that when students get pushed out of the community colleges, they are pushed altogether out of higher education.

The college’s registrar, Dulce Beltran, watched the electronic traffic jam with amazement from her home computer. She had never seen such a tide of humanity sweeping toward the college on registration night. Signing into the system as an administrator, she watched as classes filled with startling rapidity. She could also see that thousands of students were being shut out because of the overload, and with each passing minute, their chances of finding classes were diminishing.

But it's worse than that:

“The system has collapsed here,” said Padrón. “We can’t hire faculty to teach students, and our buildings are deteriorating and breaking down. Thousands and thousands of students have been turned away, which has never happened in our history. If we are forced to keep rejecting these students, I fear we are headed for some kind of social breakdown. You simply can’t deprive people of a way upward.”

and:

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but people come to work here every day with the goal of helping those who don’t have much,” said Montoya in his office next to Padrón’s. “To me, even our bureaucratic fights are interesting in that way. People don’t fight for salaries or travel or perquisites. They fight for classroom space or new desks, tools that can help the students. It becomes a passion, and it’s contagious.”

But the fact is, Miami Dade is still going broke. And the prospects for a rescue from Tallahassee appear slim.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

Higher Education and Green Jobs

Sometimes it's lonely on campus, being a planner. Start planning now to attend higher education's premier planning conference for 2010, SCUP–45, July 10–14 in Minneapolis, where you can network and converse with more than 1,000 of your peers and colleagues.

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What happens when "creative clutter" meets transparency in a new, elegant building? Robert Campbell reviews the new MIT Media Lab building at MIT.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab’s director, puts it this way: “It will take time to regain the sense of mess and to repopulate with junk.’’

It’s the classic marriage of form and content. The new building is Snow White and the Media Lab is Mad Max. Time will reveal how well the marriage works.

That said, viewed simply and purely as a work of architecture, this is a wonderful building. You can think of it as an exercise in transparency. The Media Lab has long been famous for hiding itself in a building by I.M. Pei that was a nearly windowless box. The new building, which joins the Pei at one edge, is exactly the opposite. From outside, you can look all the way through it from one end to the other. It’s sheathed in shimmering glass and metal screens that allow about half the sunlight through to the interior. You feel that the building is temptingly veiled, not blanketed.

We recently spent some time with Xarissa Holdaway who is, among other things, the editor for the Campus Ecology Project's ClimateEDU: News for the Green Campus. ClimateEDU is the most readable of the two must-read regular electronic publications devoted to campus sustainability issues. The relationship between SCUP and the Campus Ecology Project (which is a unit of the National Wildlife Federation - NWF) go back to the mid-1990s when its director, Julian Keniry, published Ecodemia, and presented on it at SCUP-31 in Washington, DC. The president of NWF's board of directors, Jerome Ringo, is a plenary speaker for SCUP-45 in Minneapolis next July!

This particular issue of ClimateEDU is themed around "green jobs" and includes articles about how community colleges are adjusting their curricula to be sensitive to the needs of green-minded employers, how that demand varies from region to region and state to state, a specific look at those issues in the hard-hit Midwest, and the "Pathways Out of Poverty" that green jobs initiatives at community colleges create for disadvantaged or impoverished students who cannot afford a four-year education.

Bold Strokes Bring Budget Relief

This excellent article is from Business Officer and was authored by Keith Houck and Joyce C. Romano: "To deal with diminishing state funding, Valencia Community College resisted a broad-brush approach. Instead, the college implemented 10 business imperatives that pinpoint the best areas for curbing costs and boosting efficiencies." The article describes each of the 10 business imperatives and summarizes what Valencia has been able to accomplish within them.

The Department Chair: Leading the Charge to Build Student Character and Leaders

A community college perspective on one role of department chairs addressing perceived need to develop student character and leadership as workforce preparation: "Can these issues be converted to measurable outcomes within the department? Can the department holistically shift its present paradigm to include leadership and character development in every course, lab, and team function within the plan of study? Is it possible to hold students accountable for learning how to be leaders of character and the successful practice therein?"

Read the article here:
http://www.league.org/blog/post.cfm/the-department-chair-leading-the-charge-to-build-student-character-and-leaders

"As the Auto Industry Shrinks, a Community College Retools"

"Community colleges across the country are being asked to educate more students with less money, but the sudden collapse of the carmaking sector has compounded the stresses of the current economic slump on Macomb [Community College]."

Some say, however, that community colleges can "turn on a dime." How is Macomb making the most of this financial crisis? In this article, Karin Fischer analyzes the recent developments of Macomb Community College in response to the troubles facing the auto industry;

"As the Auto Industry Shrinks, a Community College Retools"
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i35/35a00102.htm

Economic-development experts say community colleges can be a pivotal partner in efforts to "recast" a local economy when a once-dominant employer falters. "They have the ability to help move a region in a different direction," says James F. McKenney, vice president for economic development at the American Association of Community Colleges. "But that doesn't mean it isn't painful."

"The beauty of community colleges is that we can turn on a dime," says H. Martin Lancaster, who recently retired as president of the North Carolina Community College system. "By the time a university gets a building built, we can train a work force."

Macomb officials also are trying to reach out to the roughly 70,000 working adults in the county who have some college experience. And they are building stronger partnerships with nearby four-year institutions, like Wayne State and Oakland Universities, to better align degree programs and to allow students to concurrently enroll.

Such efforts, Mr. Jacobs says, will be important to the region's long-term economic vitality. "The purpose of a community college is not just to get people jobs," he says, "but to get people careers."

Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy With 4-Year Degrees

Some think community clleges offering 4-year degrees is the "Cat's Meow," others think it is a "solution looking for a problem." What do you think of this?

“It’s cooking in several states, in many work-force-related fields, but there’s a lot of debate and politics, and differing views on whether they’re still community colleges if they give baccalaureates,” said Beth Hagan, executive director of the Community College Baccalaureate Association, a nonprofit group that promotes the trend.

In Michigan, community colleges are seeking to offer baccalaureates in culinary arts, cement technology and nursing. Their efforts have stalled, said Mike Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association.

“We need legislation to do it, and the legislation’s been introduced, but that’s as far as it’s gotten,” Mr. Hansen said. “The four-year universities in the state are very much opposed to the idea.”

Mike Boulus, the executive director of the group that represents the four-year universities, called the plan to expand community colleges “a solution in search of a problem.”

“It’s clearly unnecessary,” Mr. Boulus said. “Community colleges should stick with the important work they do extremely well, offering two-year degrees and preparing students for transfer to four-year schools.”

Helping Community-College Students Succeed: a Moral Imperative

Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, part of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin, is keenly aware of how much better community colleges need to be:

As is typical in a recession, many community colleges are experiencing a surge in enrollment, at precisely the same time that they must — like many enterprises, both public and private — contend with choking constraints on resources.

But the challenges are more than fiscal. They are also educational. They are challenges of vision, leadership, and chosen priorities. Many would say that the challenges are even moral.

The reality for community colleges is this: No matter how good our colleges are today — and they do contribute mightily to educational access, work-force development, and economic prosperity — they simply are not yet good enough. Our results, particularly when stated in terms of student achievement, are not adequate to serve the pressing needs of individual students, communities, states, and the nation.

Community College Budgets Were Weak Even Before Financial Crisis Slammed Everyone

Scott Jaschik reports on the presentation at the AACC conference (SCUP staff member Betty Cobb represented SCUP in the AACC exhibit hall.) of the 2008 survey of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. That full report is not yet available on the AACC website, but it will be. The bottom line is that community college funding was in trouble even before last September:

“It is very clear that the high tuition/ high aid model of student financial aid does not work well, if at all, for low-income students attending community colleges,” the report says. It notes that state directors report that their lawmakers are not aligning policies to promote such policies, but are simply raising tuition.

State directors were “nearly unanimous” in finding that their students will be unable to attend without incurring debt, which discourages many from enrolling. If higher education continues to receive “what’s left on the table” in state budgets -- as has been the case -- the report project serious loss of access for low-income students.

Community Colleges See Stimulus Bill as Bonanza for Their Students

Community colleges are pretty happy with much of the stimulus, especially the changes in how Workforce Investment Act money gets distributed. (Hint: faster.)

David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, said on Monday that the change would help community colleges cover the full cost of the education they are providing, which is much higher than the average tuition that the colleges charge, $2,400 per year. With the extra cash, the colleges could pay for equipment, curriculum packages, additional faculty members, and other needs. The change would be especially helpful for programs in some technical fields that are in growing demand but are much more expensive to operate than are general-education programs.

"At a time when the colleges are getting budget cuts … getting those expenditures covered by the federal government is really helpful," Mr. Baime said.

He added that the shift in how Workforce Investment Act money gets doled out would allow more money to be spent faster than with the voucher system. That factor is consistent with the goals of the economic-stimulus bill, which seeks to pull the economy out of recession by quickly pumping federal money into circulation. The exact amount of money that would go to community colleges, and how it would be spent, would depend on what institutions the local boards awarded grants to and what spending the they deemed eligible.

Amid a California Construction Freeze, L.A. Community Colleges Push Forward With Plans

It's one characteristic of the current financial crisis, that it is affecting different kinds of institutions, in different places, in different ways. And that's even before the stimulus package is available for our "shovel ready" projects:

The University of California and California State University systems have both suspended construction projects. The shutdown could affect some $1-billion in projects in the Cal State system alone, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

But apparently the California suspension doesn’t affect plans at the Los Angeles Community College District. The Los Angeles Times reports that the community-college district is pushing ahead with $400-million in projects on its $5.7-billion plan, one of the largest higher-education expansion plans in the country.