The Texas Association of Community Colleges filed a complaint this month with the state attorney general’s office, accusing the University of Texas’ flagship campus here of inappropriately diverting funds and a professorship away from a nationally recognized community-college leadership program.
Meanwhile, the president of the American Association of Community Colleges, George R. Boggs, said education leaders around the country were concerned about “perceived attacks” on a program that is widely regarded as the top in the country for educating community-college leaders.
A University of Texas spokesman confirmed that the university had been making “strategic reallocation decisions” that could result in the diversion of surpluses from some programs in the College of Education to others.
But the Texas community-college group says the university is doing so in a way that violates generally accepted accounting standards. “In accounting, you create restricted funds for specific purposes,” the complaint says. “You can’t just move funds around from a restricted account to a general account.”
According to the complaint, the dean of education is planning to appropriate about $1-million from the budgets of two of the leadership program’s outreach arms: the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement. Those programs are largely supported by subscription and membership fees from other colleges around the country, and that money should not be diverted to other programs, the Texas association charges.
Mr. Boggs said he had sent two letters of concern to William C. Powers, president of the University of Texas, but Mr. Powers has not replied.
If funds are diverted from the university’s community-college leadership program, “it will likely alienate the endowment-fund contributors and further weaken the program,” Mr. Boggs wrote. “It will also serve notice to all that working to increase outside funding to a program will be punished and that those funds are not secure.”
Mr. Boggs graduated from the Texas program in 1984 and became a community-college president the following year.
Donald Hale, a spokesman for the University of Texas at Austin, said the deans and provost were reviewing fund balances in various units of the College of Education, including the community-college leadership program’s two outreach arms.
“These strategic budget-reallocation decisions are based on keeping a highly ranked and nationally prominent College of Education moving forward during a very difficult economic period for the university,” he said in a prepared statement.
All of the reallocated money will go toward supporting graduate students, with about $1-million designated for doctoral candidates and master’s-degree students, Mr. Hale said. The reallocation will not affect the budget the community-college program has operated with over the last three years, he added.
Mr. Hale also said on Thursday that the university’s legal and internal-audits departments were reviewing the dean’s plan for using funds from the community colleges’ program.
Reassigning Chairs
According to the complaint, the dean of the College of Education, Manuel J. Justiz, has indicated that he plans to move a prestigious chair that is now in the community-college leadership program to another part of the College of Education. The A.M. Aikin chair is held by Walter G. Bumphus, who is leaving to become president of the American Association of Community Colleges in January.
Mr. Hale, the campus spokesman, confirmed that Mr. Bumphus’s chair would not immediately be refilled. “The dean feels, and the provost concurs, that it is prudent to leave the position vacant until the budgetary situation becomes more clear,” he said.
Officials with the Texas community-colleges association say the loss of a tenured professor will mean that the program won’t be able to serve as many students at a time when community-college enrollment is booming and leaders are retiring. Reassigning chairs outside the leadership program would be “a breach of trust” with donors, the complaint said.
Richard M. Rhodes, president of El Paso Community College and chair of the Texas community-colleges association, echoed those concerns.
“We worry about the commitment to educating leaders at a time when community colleges are filling a void in higher education,” he said on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Texas attorney general’s office said he could not comment on the complaint.
