Growing pains: Community colleges cope with surge of students
Longview News Journal
Thursday, August 28, 2008

There are good headaches and bad headaches.

It's a good guess that East Texas community college leaders are reaching for the aspirin bottle with smiles on their faces this week.

It appears that Kilgore College and Panola College are poster children of what is said to be a boom in community college enrollments across the country.

At Kilgore, the administration is having to scramble to add classes and staff to meet the needs of the 5,404 students it counted as of the first day of school on Friday. That number is up 7 percent from 2007 and nearly 20 percent from the beginning of the 2006 school year.

The vagaries of the community college finance system in Texas means the local college will have to find a way to bite the bullet on the added costs, but Kilgore College President Bill Holda said state funding will catch up with the surge.

Down in Carthage, administrators are having to deal with a big rise in enrollment, and a heightened demand for campus housing because students who once might have commuted from other communities are concerned about the cost of gas.

There are a variety of factors feeding the surge in community college enrollment, ranging from renewed focus on technical and career education at the secondary level to economic factors prompting students to seek the most affordable path through college.

So far, the local colleges have been working to stay a step ahead in anticipating the needs of their students. The re-establishment of a shuttle bus service between Kilgore College's main campus and its Longview branch is an example of helping students overcome the high price of gas.

One thing we think is certain is that the surge in enrollment at East Texas community colleges bodes well for this region in the years to come. Even in the oil and gas field, where drilling and employment are surging, there is a greater need than ever for workers who have the technical skills that are often taught on campuses in cities such as Kilgore, Carthage and Longview.

We applaud the perseverance of community college leaders such as Holda who have had to navigate many detours and hurdles thrown at them by state and federal lawmakers in the past. Institutions such as Kilgore College, Panola College, Northeast Texas Community College in Mount Pleasant and Texas State Technical Institute in Marshall are doing yeoman's work in educating and preparing a new generation of workers for the 21st Century.

We admire their willingness to work through the headaches that even success can bring.

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