By Charles Loiacono     

What’s Happening?

            Not much!

It’s as if everything at NCC has calmed down in anticipation of the changing of the guard.

No one knows what the new administration will look like or how it will change the relationships on campus, so things are in limbo.

         The Search

The search committee is at work seeking candidates for college president. The ad has been promulgated. Dates have been set for reviewing résumés and conducting interviews. The firm of Isaacson, Miller has been retained by the Board of Trustees to oversee the search. So far, they seem to be handling things in a professional manner.

          ELI/LINCC

The fate of ELI/LINCC remains in limbo like everything else. Although the arbitration hearings have ended and although the PERB hearings have ended, there have been no decisions. Indeed, briefs have been received in both arenas. The PERB briefs were submitted months ago; and although the briefs were submitted in the arbitration case, there has been no conference by the panel to discuss the merits of the case.

       The County’s Budget Crisis

As with the nation, the county is experiencing financial pain. Much can be written about how we got into this mess, but the mantra of the day is: Let’s move forward and get out of the mess.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that when government gets into a jam, they come to the people to get them out of it. Here in the county, the people are being told that services will be cut and some new taxes will be added to their burden. .

The unions are being hardest hit. Every union in the county, except the AFA and the NCCFT, has been asked to accept drastic cuts or face layoffs. Talks continue in an effort to fine tune those cuts.

The reader may well ask why the two campus unions have been spared. The only reason can be the fact that the other five unions are service unions that provide vital services in running the county, but do not produce significant revenue. While in educating the student population the AFA and the NCCFT certainly provide a vital service, we also, however, bring in the big bucks—indeed, millions of those big bucks. Therefore, the threat of layoffs would defeat the purpose of bailing out the county. Consider the revenue the AFA brings into the coffers:

Each student registered in a three credit course, pays $444 in tuition. Thirty students, the average class size, pay $13,320 for the privilege of taking that course. The median pay for teaching a

three credit course is $3,933. The math shows that every time an adjunct professor teaches a course, the college/county makes a $9,387 profit from tuition alone. This past fall, 1500 adjunct professors each taught two courses. Multiply that $9,387 by 2 and you get $18,774. Multiply $18,774 by 1500 and you get $28 million in one semester. There is more than one semester an academic year. When we calculate the income from state aid and property taxes, we readily see that the adjunct faculty makes NCC the biggest profit making entity in the county—excluding, of course, revenue from tax collection. As the reader can see, the threat of layoffs was never an option. That’s why we were never asked to be a party to bailing out the county.

           The Budget

The college budget, however, is another story. The administration does not bring in revenue. They just eat it up. The cost of supporting this administration has outpaced everything else at NCC and shows no sign of abating. It costs much more to support the administration than it costs to pay the entire adjunct faculty. The new administration will have to consider the waste inherent in what can only be described as administrative bloat.

The legislature finally got it. This past September, before the financial meltdown, the administration was told that there would be a zero increase in the college budget. The legislature recognized waste when they saw it.

        The ELI/LINCC Investigation

            There has been no official word on the outcome of the visit made by the District Attorney’s office and the U.S. Department of Education.

            As I have reported in these pages, once local and federal officials took up the investigation, we were out of the loop.

That concludes my overview of what’s happening here at old ivy. The one factor left out is the element of hope. We hope, for the sake of the entire college community, that a new era will come with a new administration and a new majority on the Board of Trustees. Perhaps this new era will bring a new awareness in dealing with the different communities of interest that make up the college. Perhaps, just perhaps, trust will then become the bond that binds us.