Highland Community College Board Candidates Weigh District's Financial, Enrollment Woes

FREEPORT — Two Highland Community College trustees, each with two six-year terms behind them, and a younger challenger are vying for two board seats on Tuesday's ballot.

Declining enrollment, reductions in state funding, and a deficit in this year's operating funds are among the challenges that face Highland Community College in the immediate future. These factors have pushed up Highland's tuition, $118 per credit hour, to one of the highest of the 39 community college districts in the state.

State aid for the community college has declined in recent years and enrollment has fallen from 8,358 students in 1992 to 4,486 students in 2014.

Blake Musser, a Freeport native and Aquin High School graduate, is the only one of the three candidates who attended Highland, first for a semester after he graduated from high school and then for a second semester in 2004, as a 24-year-old Marine veteran. He enlisted before 9/11 and spent nine months in Iraq before he was injured and returned home. "I needed that one semester to become reoriented into civilian life," he said.

Musser got his bachelor's degree at Illinois State University and a master's in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University. He and his wife returned to Freeport in 2012, and he works as a strategic aide to the chief executive officer of SupplyCore Inc., an integrated logistics company in Rockford.

"This community gave me my moral compass, and I wanted to make sure my kids had that," he said. "We have challenges here — it's undeniable — but the biggest challenge is negativity. I want to be positive."

Musser believes Highland needs to focus on nontraditional students like he once was, and to provide more support for these students. He also said community colleges like Highland need to lobby against unfunded mandates. "We can alleviate some of the burden by reviewing which unfunded mandates aren't helping the college, students or the community."

An unfunded mandate is requirement set forth by a governing agency, such as the state, without providing funding to set the requirement in motion.

Seeing Highland as an economic driver, specifically for nontraditional students, will fuel innovation and stimulate the local economy, said Musser. "I think strategically: Where are we now and where do we want to go?" he said. "Why continue down the same road when there's a short-cut." Musser said rather than fall into myopic habits, it's important to adjust to new developments.

David Shockey, a Freeport lawyer who lives in Ridott, believes Highland provides a good education for students in the region. "Highland is a good asset for our community," he said. "If you look at your tax bill, the portion paid to Highland is very, very reasonable." He chose to run for a third term because he thought it would be important for Highland President-elect Tim Hood to have a good base of support.

"As challenging as the budget deficit is right now, it's also an opportunity for Highland and for our community," Shockey said. "We need to start a new paradigm of partnership."

Shockey sees large corporations investing huge amounts of money in educational programs at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, his alma mater, and believes businesses have to start investing more in community colleges. He has a bachelor's degree in agriculture economics and a law degree from the University of Illinois.

Earlier this month, when Highland's administration asked for a $10 per credit hour tuition increase for fiscal 2016, Shockey moved to amend the increase to $5 instead, which passed 7-1. "It seemed to me that we could try some other things first," he said. "We can cut more. I hate to have students think (tuition increase) was the only option we were exploring to increase revenue."

Robert Urish, a business owner from Mount Morris, said finding ways to increase enrollment would help better Highland's financial picture. "Higher enrollment also brings more revenue, which ultimately reduces deficits," he said.

It's a difficult assignment for a district that has been seeing decreasing high school enrollment for the past decade. He also would like to see Highland offer more programs to attract nontraditional students as well as recent high school graduates.

Urish, a Yale University graduate with an MBA from the University of Michigan, said the old community college paradigm — with one-third of revenue coming from local taxes, one-third from tuition and one-third from the state — is "pretty much gone. Eventually we will be forced to deal with this."

He also expects to see local high schools and community colleges working together more with dual-credit enrollment. "This saves students and parents an awful lot of money," he said.

Cindy Scott Day: 815-275-2874; [email protected]; @CindyScottDay