Examining Layoffs at Atlantic Cape

MAYS LANDING – The Board of Trustees of Atlantic Cape Community College approved a revenue budget for the upcoming fiscal year March 28, that assumes layoffs of 24 supervisory and staff positions. 
In January, the board also approved a required 210-day advanced notice to culinary faculty that layoffs in that program could be required based on fall 2017 enrollment.
The board also approved a 3.3 percent tuition increase for the coming year.
The reason for the layoffs is a precipitous and continuing decline in credit enrollment.
From 2010, Atlantic Cape’s high enrollment point, the college has lost well over a quarter of its overall credit enrollment, and the Culinary Arts program is down 54 percent.
The budget approved for FY 2018 anticipates revenue of $37,145,688. That revenue level would be the lowest since FY 2005.
Adding to the difficulty is that the continuing declines in enrollment and revenue at the college are showing no signs of bottoming.
Cape May Campus
It is too early to say what specific impact the most recent cuts will have on the Cape May County Campus. When asked about specific impacts, a college representative said: “Positions at all three Atlantic Cape campuses will be affected.”
The board is scheduled to take action on specific positions at its April meeting.
The problem for the Cape May Campus is that it already has so little to give in any restructuring. The fiscal 2016 revised budget for the campus showed $173,058 in salaries and benefits and $30,264 in operating funds. 
The current FY 2017 numbers already show significant reductions before the most recent board action on layoffs. In the FY 2017 board Summary Report, the salaries and wages line item for Cape May County’s campus had dropped to $82,570 while the operating funds stayed flat, a decrease of 45 percent overall. These numbers do not include the expense of faculty.
Cape May County contributes about $1.7 million annually as its share of the college’s county revenues. Atlantic County contributes around $6.8 million annually. The combined contribution from the county taxpayers has consistently represented about 20 percent of the college’s annual budget.
Atlantic Cape Revenue Dilemma
According to the college’s release, the budget approved for FY 2018 is down 6 percent from the previous year and anticipates another 7 percent decline in credit enrollments.
The problem with the budget cuts is that they occur in an environment of continuing decline. No one can say where the bottom is regarding enrollment and revenue so that the institution can appropriately adjust. 
Using staffing numbers from Atlantic Cape’s most recent set of published financial statements, the reduction of 24 full-time non-faculty positions represents a decrease of 10 percent, a steep cut. 
It also represents a drop of 20 percent total from the staffing high point in 2010. Full-time faculty positions are down 10 percent from that high point.
The college’s two-county service area has experienced declining population levels parallel to the enrollment decline. These numbers tell a tale that goes beyond mere demographic change.
The declining population in the college’s service area is a significant factor in the enrollment losses; however, as the 2016 Herald series on the first 10 years of the Cape May County campus noted, Atlantic Cape clung to a recruitment strategy that failed to counter the demographic downturn even after the nature of that demographic change was clear.
High school graduation numbers are knowable. Their precipitous decline can be seen before it is felt. 
Atlantic Cape continued to place its major focus on selling its degree programs to high school graduates while the high schools in its service area experienced, and continue to experience, significant declines of their own.
What did not emerge from the interviews for the Herald series was any strategic focus on the older non-traditional student who has been out of high school for some years and is seeking job skills for a better competitive position in the job market.
In the most recent decades, this group of students has increased as a share of total national enrollment in higher education.
What is needed is an effort to broaden the pool from which the college seeks its enrollment and to structure programs to accomplish that end.
The student coming out of high school seeking an associate degree or eventual transfer to a four-year institution is nice to have but difficult to get in Atlantic and Cape May counties.
Go Forward
Atlantic Cape needs to halt the decline in enrollments before it can grow any of its losses back. It needs the stability of a bottom. The continued free fall in enrollment year-to-year feeds on itself after a period.
The task facing the institution and its new president is to refocus the college on a strategy that can work in the environment it serves. What is needed most in the short-term is a strategy that produces revenue.
Such a strategy may involve many different factors.
It may require the institution to become more attractive to non-traditional students through innovative programming.
It may involve focusing on a faculty of practitioners that give students a sense they are learning from those who earn a living “doing what they teach,” a strategy used effectively in many institutions.
It may lead to innovative ways to make the college a cultural and intellectual hub for the community, and even for the large influx of seasonal visitors and second home owners.
Generating revenue in this way can have an added benefit of increased visibility in the community.
It may involve looking at interest areas unique to a tourism-dominated, maritime environment that may resonate with people who have elected to live in these counties.
It may look to the small-business-dominated economy with programs to help the entrepreneur and small business owner.
It undoubtedly will involve a visible focus on jobs and training and placement in ways that are not tightly bound to degree programs.
It may require innovative ways to get students past a remedial work dominate introduction to college.  
All of these things and many more that could be mentioned are not new. Picking the right avenues of effort and linking them in a strategy is the task of the institution’s leaders, a difficult and demanding task.
Business As Usual Not Working
What recommends new thinking is that business, as usual, is producing 5 to 7 percent declines annually. Without a stable revenue base, any turnaround is improbable.
State funds will not increase and the county share of revenue, regularly at about 20 percent to 21 percent will not go up dramatically. The revenue base depends on tuition and fees for better than 60 percent of its bottom line.
The challenge is to find ways to broaden the pool of potential students – using the broadest sense of the word student – and attract them to what Atlantic Cape has to offer.
The fact that other community colleges in the state are seeing many of the same problems is of little consequence. The challenge is for one institution in one service area, Atlantic, and Cape May counties.
The release concerning the impending layoffs noted that the previous administration was able to balance the budget through “general staff attrition” and the use of a “strategic finance model.” All to the good, except that balancing the budget is only a goal in a strictly technical sense.
Balancing the budget around a strategy that is viable in this market is both a broader and more difficult task.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.