AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump is delivering on a promised war on higher ed in the U.S.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We are going to choke off the money to schools that aid the Marxist assault on our American heritage and on Western civilization itself.
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TRUMP: The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination in our colleges will soon be over.
RASCOE: The primary target has been elite schools like Harvard and Columbia, but a war is a war, and that means there's collateral damage. America's community colleges educate roughly 40% of the country's undergraduates, and they're subject to many of the Trump administration's cancellations and restrictions. Joining us now is Nerita Hughes, president of Michigan's Bay College. Good morning.
NERITA HUGHES: Good morning. How are you?
RASCOE: I am good. And from North Carolina - my hometown - JB Buxton is president of Durham Technical Community College. Hello.
JB BUXTON: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: And in Florida, we have Georgia Lorenz, who's the president of Seminole State College. Welcome.
GEORGIA LORENZ: Thank you so much.
RASCOE: We have heard that federal money - it has been slashed to a lot of research universities, and a lot of federal grants were cut as a part of DOGE. Have any of you had federal funding slashed or been impacted?
BUXTON: Ayesha, I would say at Durham Tech, it's been some of the proximate cuts in federal funding that we've seen an impact from. I mean, all three of us went through a freeze of our adult education and literacy training federal dollars. We received those back, but it's looking like they're on the chopping block for next year. Those are folks who are coming to us without a high school degree, looking to get that degree or equivalency and move on in their career. We've seen partners lose federal grants.
We've got outstanding organization in our area that trains women in the skilled trades, and they had their federal funding canceled. And then for us in the Research Triangle region, we've seen major federal cuts and impacts. We have an environmental protection agency office here, National Institute of Health, research institutions like Duke and UNC. Those are impacting job possibilities for our students. So it's kind of cascading impact we're beginning to see rather than the direct federal research impact, grant impact.
LORENZ: So I'm the president of Seminole State College. We're located in Seminole County in Florida. We're just north of Orlando, and we're having a great fall semester. Enrollment continues to grow along with our region here in Florida. We actually just received two new federal grants - the student support grant and CCAMPIS grant, which is aimed at supporting students who are also parents. So we've actually just gotten two brand-new federal grants.
RASCOE: And President Hughes, has there been any impact at Bay College?
HUGHES: No. And I will say that for us, we just got our renewal reaffirmed for our TRIO grant, and we know that that was one of the federal grants that a lot of institutions were not getting reaffirmed for because of the emphasis around who it serves - low-income, first-generation students, and then also students that have disabilities.
RASCOE: Why do you think that you were approved again and that was extended? Do you think that the makeup of the campus had an impact on the money getting renewed?
HUGHES: Honestly, I would say no. I think it's - the services that we're being able to provide. So if we look at the profile of my institution, a small rural college. I have a little bit over 2,000 students. It's a female student who is Pell eligible. Not necessarily a first-generation student. Not necessarily a veteran. Primarily white. Approximately 26 years of age. We do have students of color. Is it a large population? Absolutely not. But when we look at the need and the area for which I'm located, that's where I feel like we were able to get the funding. And I will just call it out because we know that this was another impact, was we didn't necessarily spell out where some of the schools that did not get reaffirmed had spelled out or put in their diversity, equity and inclusion work, right? And so we're saying, no, we're helping all.
RASCOE: President Lorenz, how have you dealt with this controversy over DEI, and have you felt any impacts of it? Has it changed the way your school has operated?
LORENZ: No. I don't really think it has changed the way we operate. You know, as open-access institutions, our mission is to serve all who can benefit and are interested in the opportunity that we provide. And community colleges act as such an important entry point to higher education for so many different types of students - all sorts of different backgrounds, career-changers, military veterans, people who may have started a college degree but never completed it - and we continue to do that mission-driven work.
BUXTON: Probably like my colleagues, we reflect every age range you can think of. We're probably 16 to 70 years of age. About a third of our students identify as Black, a third white, 25% Latino, Latina and then the other roughly 10% is Asian or Native American. Here's the thing, community colleges, you know, we're responding to skilled trades companies who are telling us we don't have enough employees. And we know that about 4% of construction jobs are women. And so we know that's a great population to bring in and help in our skilled trades.
We know that with a major life sciences biotech boom, there's an opportunity to get a lot more of our student body into that, and that is mainly Black and Latino. There's a lot of uncertainty about whether that's seen as DEI. We see it as responding to employer demand, increasing individual opportunity. We're going to take our cues from employers about what they need in the workforce, and we're going to make sure we're supporting and preparing the full range of talent for the full range of opportunities in our local economy.
HUGHES: Community colleges are serving our students, and it's the community's college. Most people know who my governor is, and she has not walked us back. Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been very bold to say, we're going to continue to serve our students. We're going to continue to serve our constituents. And again, just like JB mentioned, we're also looking at how do we talk to our employers so that it's normalized and it's not a thing. It's the through line. It's any and everything that we do as community colleges.
RASCOE: Community colleges tend to rely more on state and local funding than money from the federal government. Does this mean that community colleges are less beholden to the desires and whims of the Trump administration than, say, elite private schools that receive these multimillion-dollar grants from the federal government?
LORENZ: Well, we, you know, all administer federal financial aid, so we certainly have significant ties to the federal government in that way. But, yeah, we would be less beholden in the ways that you describe because our operations don't depend - you know, we don't have big research labs that depend on federal funds. We might have these smaller student support grants that depend on federal funds.
BUXTON: President Lorenz is exactly right. We don't depend on federal grants at the same level that some of the big universities do. We don't have endowments to tax in the same way, but our students are often highly dependent on federal resources - Pell grants, federal work study, SNAP benefits. For our students, it's an uncertain time because they're looking and trying to understand where that's going.
RASCOE: Are you seeing any direct impacts now, or is it just that concerns are bubbling up?
BUXTON: I think more just concern with the looming Medicaid cuts coming. More just concern about what that impact's going to be. And I'll go back to the shutdown and SNAP benefits. I mean, that became very clear, and we had huge increases in take-up at our food pantry and a lot of concern amongst students who utilize that service.
LORENZ: You know, we mobilized and increased supplies in our own food pantry here and helped connect students to resources that are close to where they live. We did staff food drive and fundraising to try to help them through that time, and we're hopeful that those dollars will be restored to them soon.
RASCOE: Talk to me about the needs of your students.
LORENZ: You know, I think the greatest challenge for our students is balancing all of their different responsibilities. They're working. They're taking care of family, and they just have a lot of demands on their time and attention. And doing whatever we can to support them through that has become very important.
HUGHES: The biggest need that we're seeing is around mental health. Due to the demands of trying to balance going to school, working a full-time job if you're a single parent, I mean, all these different demands that the traditional-age college student would not necessarily have, how do we make sure that we can provide some of those mental health services for them? But not only that, but we also have our food pantry. We also have our career closet, right? - so that we're making sure that we can help them, you know, throughout their entire process.
RASCOE: The Trump administration has said it's trying to strengthen workforce readiness and technical training programs. Does this represent a big opportunity for community colleges?
LORENZ: I would say absolutely, yes. You know, very often, people talk about higher education as one big system, and there's very little recognition of the differences for community colleges. You know, all the talk about high costs and student debt, that's not us. And the fact that we do offer automotive programs and construction trades, I think this might be a moment in time where we get better recognition.
HUGHES: And I would agree, the closer that we can get aligned with the trades, the greater that we will be.
BUXTON: I'll be the third in agreement here. I mean, huge opportunities for students in our area - life sciences, health care occupations, clinical trials, skilled trades. I mean, the list goes on and on. If you've got technician connected to your job title, you're going to do well right now in this economy. So it's been good to see this administration talking about apprenticeships. I think what I'd like to see is less uncertainty. We're trying to plan and see where we need to make our investments, new training programs. I think we all would love to have a little more certainty about where we're headed so all of this lines up and gets our students the best opportunity possible.
RASCOE: We've been speaking with three community college presidents - Nerita Hughes of Bay College, JB Buxton of Durham Technical Community College and Georgia Lorenz of Seminole State College. Thank you to you all.
HUGHES: Thank you.
BUXTON: Thank you.
LORENZ: Thank you, Ayesha.
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