THE GORGE — Lower graduation and transfer rates for Hispanic and female students at Columbia Gorge Community College (CGCC), and financial reporting glitches, occupied the college board meeting on Jan. 20 — along with the news that programs for adult, non-English-speaking, nontraditional and GED students are doing well and exceeding state averages.
Nate Stice board chair, said the board is still working with CGCC’s DEI office and staff on how best to address impacts from ICE, and that will be addressed at a future meeting instead.
With data from the last three years in hand, Vice President of Instructional Services Jarett Gilbert reported that overall graduation and transfer rates at CGCC are comparable to those at the four “peer colleges” they measure CGCC against. Female students, however, had a lower retention rate than male students — also lower than their female-identifying peers at other colleges. So did students under 19 years old.
And since 2019, Hispanic-identifying students have transferred or graduated at half the rate of their peers. Only 7% graduated.
CGCC analyses three-year reports, and this one spanned the Covid-19 pandemic.
“So that is something that we would, as a Hispanic-serving institution, we would want to mind that — to understand where we can look at some leading indicators ... We’ve got some lessons that we need to better understand here,” Gilbert said.
Hispanic-serving colleges are those which enroll at least 25% of their students from the Latino (or Latina, Latine) community.
Gilbert noted three new technology and trades programs added over the last few years, “which tend to enroll with a gender skew and an age skew towards non-tradition learners,” with more male students in these programs. Also, COVID-19 happened during these years.
Over the last couple years, Hispanic-identifying students did have higher retention rates here than at peer colleges — higher than white students. Meaning, more of them chose to stay at CGCC.
Board members thanked him for the report and made suggestions, with Director Oralee Branch asking what actions the college is planning on taking to help Hispanic and younger female students. The college has partnered with Excellencia, an organization dedicated to improving Latino degree attainment, to identify any policies that might not be serving students since 2023, Gilbert responded. He will also seek exit interviews in future to “better understand the full life-cycle of our students,” and hopes for happier trends in his data over the next few years.
Graduation and transfer numbers for nontraditional students and those 25 years and older looked much better: More than 40% of GED (high-school equivalency) and ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) and ABE (adult basic learners) students gained skills after 40 hours of instruction, exceeding state targets.
But a significant percent of ABE students leave partway into the program, lowering their chances of passing a GED test in the future. CGCC is looking at how to keep more students, for longer, Gilbert said.
Also, a “budget limitation” this year meant cutting a week off each term of GED instruction, shortening “opportunities for a population that is already at risk.”
Financial data glitches
Sam Draper, vice president of administrative services, noted revenue is down a little from last year, but he thinks that’s because of an ongoing “software glitch,” which is decreasing total tuition revenue line by about $400,000.
The board had complained on Dec. 16 of financial reports that do not match the other data they can see. Draper had admitted “major problems with the way both CNF and CNS are set up.” The reports “will never, the way we operate, match what’s going into our audited financial statement. There are certain journal entries that are made, and things that never make it into the financial system, and ... that’s just how we operate, and I guess maybe we’ve always operated. ... you’re never gonna get an accurate balance sheet, those accounts are not gonna be accurate, and there’s gonna be some affect on the profit and loss as well,” he said.
The college later told Columbia Gorge News through Tom Penberthy, "The financial software in place has an issue that causes delayed data transfer from the student information system ...this is an ongoing issue we are working to resolve."
Board Member Tim Arbogast said on Dec. 16, “To me, it’s a little concerning, when we’ve been getting this report every month, to hear that maybe we don’t know where those numbers are coming from,” adding, “The request was that the system should be generating a report that we could rely on. So, if it’s not mapped out correctly, then we’re just getting wrong numbers.”
The reports are still glitching, but Stice noted the finance and audit committee is set for in-depth discussion of the reporting errors.
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