Rainy day blues at UDC: furloughs, pay cuts and tuition hikes at the University of the District of Columbia - University of the District of Columbia

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 13, 1996 by Ronald A. Taylor

Washington -- For most colleges and universities, May is the month for

bestowing "rights and privileges" to deserving scholars.

For the University of the District of Columbia, May was also a time for

handing out furloughs to workers and a tuition hike to students.

By the time the month had ended, the school's board of trustees had adopted

higher tuition, slashed pay for its 375 full-time faculty members, gouged the

administrative staff's salaries and shortened the academic calendar

by beginning the coming school year Oct. 1 instead of Aug. 16. -- all to

accommodate a $6.7 million budget deficit.

The deficit is just part of the myriad problems confronting the

10,000-student school as UDC struggles through the same kind of fiscal

mire faced by its parent governmental body; Washington, DC.

At the same time, its current budget crisis highlights a question that has

nagged UDC throughout its existence: Can public higher education survive in

the nation's capital?

The school was created in 1976 by merging the DC Teachers College, Federal

City College and Washington Technical Institute in what remains one of the

nation's only urban land grant universities.

Virtually every problem faced throughout the academy these days is

present -- and writ large -- on the small but modem looking urban campus

located in an upscale pat of town here.

Fiscal woes? In the last six years, UDC's budget,

most of which comes from a congressional appropriation

that is passed through the District of Columbia

government, has done nothing but shrink.

Even before the current round of fiscal woes, the city's

contribution to the school's budget fell from $76 million in

fiscal 1992 to $43 million now. And that was before the

city's financial woes worsened into a nightmare status.

Now, with the city's budget approved by a hostile

Congress and overseen by a skeptical DC Financial

Control Board, the school now faces the threat of a DC

budget appropriation of $41 million in the coming fiscal

year. At the same time, its enrollment has plummeted

from the 15,000 students present when the school opened

in 1976 to today's 10,000-student level.

Even before the current round of budget cuts, the

school's budget had been cut by $32 million since

fiscal 1991.

Tuition pressure? The days of UDC's bargain-basement

$1,118 a year tuition and fees for District

residents are over. The trustees voted an increase that

will more than double the price of a year at UDC for

District residents by the end of next year to make the

cost of a year at UDC $2,010.

Students unprepared for college? An estimated 90

percent of UDC's incoming students need

remedial reading and 80 percent are in need of

remedial math.

Academic stature? Two decades after it was

established, UDC does not offer a doctoral degree and

the 132 degree programs it used to offer have been

reduced to 75 degree programs, including eight graduate,

45 baccalaureate and 22 associate programs.

At the same time, the impact of the school's

troubles are beginning to show up in its degree

output. Although UDC remains in the top 20 among

institutions producing degrees for African Americans,

the most recent available Department of Education

statistics show that

the number of degrees

fell slightly

between 1991-92

and 1992-93.

Critics of the

school say that reflects

the slow pace

at which people

achieve degrees

there -- congressional

critics, for

example, say their

figures show that

only 22 percent of

UDC students

achieve degrees.

Weak political

support?

Suggestions to convert the four-year school into a

community college are so constant that a demographic

and statistical overview prepared by the

provost to answer frequently-asked questions includes

a tuition comparison with both the University

of Maryland-College Park and community colleges in

lower-income Maryland counties far from DC.

In addition, calls to dismantle the university's

affiliated DC School of Law are common statements

on Capitol Hill and come from both sides of the

political aisle, as well as from both Black and white

members of Congress.

All told, the school, along with the very idea of

publicly-funded higher education for a mostly black

student population, is under withering fire, says UDC

president Dr. Tilden LeMelle, the university's eighth

president in 20 years and a veteran of similar wars at

City University of New York. Twenty years after

joining CUNY as a professor, LeMelle left as one of the

senior administrators in the CUNY system for UDC.

He and others view the criticism of UDC as having

twin roots. The first is in the disdain among whites for

higher education for Blacks. The second is that there

is ambivalence among some Blacks here for competition

to Howard University.

"The disappointing thing for me is that in a

predominantly Black city we get worse treatment in

terms of support than the land grant colleges in the

other states," LeMelle said in a recent interview.

Unlike other land grant universities, UDC must

rely on the DC government, through the U.S. Congress.

One of the things it relies on is the

federal payment made in lieu of real estate

taxes but meanwhile the city's tax base has