New Jersey Cuts Funding for Community College Students

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who wants to cut tuition grants for community college students. (Flickr/cwalker71)

Yisela Barragan is one of four children, and works two jobs to help out her family. So when she got the opportunity to start her education for free at Bergen Community College (BCC) in northeastern New Jersey and stay close to her family, she took it, and says that “it's been a life saver to not have to worry about paying for college.” She was given this opportunity through a New Jersey state program called NJ STARS, which offers full community college scholarships for students at the top of their graduating class, and then, for students with a high enough grade-point average, a yearly scholarship to the public college or university of their choice. “It has been a pleasure attending BCC,” Barragan says, “and I wouldn't have done so if it wasn't for the NJ STARS program.”

Barragan's story isn't so different from Ryan Obico’s, a student who also enrolled in the NJ STARS program and is about to graduate from BCC. Obico got his opportunity to save his family debt while they recover from the expenses of his brother’s education. “Now I'm graduating,” he says, “and I can say that BCC is my home and because of NJ STARS I am proud to call it my home.” He’s also happy to get the opportunity to continue his education, knowing he “will be financially better off than the others who started at a four-year college aiming for the same degree as me.”

But now, thanks to Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) New Jersey budget this year, Barragan and Obico could be the last generation of students to benefit from NJ STARS. Of course, BCC isn't alone; colleges across the state will be suffering serious cutbacks that endanger programming thanks to a state budget crisis. But ending NJ STARS could make a significant difference for students like Barragan and Obico in the years to come.

BCC was feeling the effects of budget cuts even before this year's debate heated up. For a college population of 17,000, and with a growth of 25 percent over the past couple years, BCC has still not been able to add any positions to the overwhelmed departments that handle admissions, financial aid, tuition billing and registration in at least five years. Jeremiah Ryan, BCC's president, was hoping to make some much-needed budget increases this year. But even though Ryan was hoping for such badly needed increases, the proposed 2010-2011 budget recommended incredible cuts to education statewide.

Christie's cuts to New Jersey colleges will not only will it keep them from making the changes and additions that might improve, but it could potentially suspend and forever change the NJ STARS program. The program already took a hit last year when then-Gov. Jon Corzine (D) changed its qualifying standards from students graduating in the top 20 percent of their high school classes to cutting the program qualifications to the top 15 percent of high school graduates. Christie's plan proposes that no one would be offered NJ STARS scholarships for the 2010 graduating class, and in 2011, NJ STARS would only be offered to the top 5 percent of New Jersey high school graduates, a fact that Ryan is certain would effectively kill the program.

“From the big picture, it’s just one more budget [initiative] that continues to disinvest in higher education,” Ryan says, pointing out that over the last 25 years, the overall percentage of the budget going to higher education in New Jersey had been cut from 10 to 5 percent, and that when it comes to higher education spending, New Jersey comes in 50th among the states. “You can’t get much lower than that,” he says.

The new budget cuts to higher education are the way Christie is attempting to balance the state's budget. For BCC, this will mean a 15.6 percent cut in state aid. For private colleges in New Jersey, there will be no state aid this year.

Ryan is frustrated and disappointed by the cuts and the issues with the NJ STARS program because Christie seems determined to see higher education as part of a budget problem rather than part of a long-term solution for economic recession. “We think that there’s probably no better place to invest right now than in current and future jobs so that we can get ourselves out of the recession that we’re in,” he says, “We’ve made that philosophical, practical, and economic impact argument, and it hasn’t gone anywhere.”

The NJ STARS program was created as a public policy program in New Jersey because it was a state with an unfortunate predilection for “brain drain,” or talented young people leaving to cities with more attractive educational, job, and lifestyle options. As Ryan says, “New Jersey ranks first in the country for losing people for higher ed. We lose about 60 percent of our high school graduates.” Indeed, in 2008, New Jersey brought in only 4,386 students from out of state and lost 32,205 students to other states. Clearly, young people are leaving at a faster rate than they are coming back.

And NJ STARS is a program that most effectively helps middle-income students, ones who are having trouble affording college, but can’t get assistance through Pell or Tag grants. Defunding the program means taking opportunities away from students who fall through the college affordability cracks. It means that students like Yisela or Ryan, or the 300 other STARS students at BCC who don’t have the opportunity to go to college without debt or strengthen New Jersey by staying in state. But NJ STARS students are still passionate about its importance and the need to keep it going.

At a recent budget hearing at BCC, three STARS students spoke about the importance of the program in their lives, and roughly 50 students showed up in support of their classmates and NJ STARS. Obico was one of those students, “I felt that it was very important to be there because words can only do so much to persuade a person,” he says. “If there are many people, it will show that there are people who do care and that there are people who are affected negatively.”

Barragan also testified in support of the NJ STARS program last year at Montclair State University. “I told the board of trustees my story as an NJ STARS recipient and how important it is to keep the scholarship going because there are many others who are just like me, who appreciate the push for success. It felt like I did a lot of good standing up for something I believed in,” she says.

Ryan is encouraged to see students speaking out in favor of keeping NJ STARS. “That’s better than me doing it! Though I did testify and I did say to keep it, I’m convinced the senators were listening to the students a lot closer than they were listening to me,” Ryan says.

Though things look dim for the NJ STARS program at the moment—it seems likely the program will be suspended this year—advocates are still hoping to bring it back next year and hope to expand it beyond the top 5 percent of New Jersey high school graduates. Advocates hope the message will find its way to the right ears and keep New Jersey from permanently defunding its greatest resource: young people.

Rebecca Foerg-Spittel is a staff writer for Campus Progress. She attends the College of Holy Cross.

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