Important message from the President

March 29, 2023

Dear CCA Community,

I am writing to share an important update on CCA and work we must do in the coming weeks to ensure a vibrant future for our college. While our long-term outlook is strong, we are not insulated from the current pressures being felt across all of higher education. Nationwide, colleges have seen enrollment declines due to a long-anticipated drop in the college-going population, which has been compounded by pandemic-related enrollment and financial challenges. New student interest and enrollment is healthy, but our recovery from the pandemic has been slower than anticipated and today CCA's student body is nearly 20% smaller than before the pandemic.

Because CCA's annual budget is heavily dependent upon tuition, decreased enrollment means decreased revenue. We need to adjust our budget now to reflect this new reality to ensure a balanced budget for the coming year that allows us to continue to meet our educational mission.

Aligning our budget with current enrollment

During the pandemic crisis we relied on college reserves for support but that is no longer possible. To achieve balance in our budget for the coming year, we must reduce CCA's total expenses by 10%. The Budget Office will be reaching out to budget managers today with guidance on the reductions that must be made to their operating budgets. This information will be followed by information sessions to provide those managers with support as they build budgets for the coming year. These reductions will not be easy, but they are essential. They also will not fully close the budget gap.

To balance the college budget, CCA will need to reduce the size of our staff to reflect the current size of our college. These reductions will not impact faculty, as the size of our faculty is adjusted in line with enrollment each semester.

Rethinking and reinventing our work

To support this effort, Human Resources has started to work closely with division leadership to identify opportunities to rethink and restructure their approach to their particular plans, and to re-prioritize their work, which may include reducing workload to align with lower levels of staffing.

Over the next several weeks, we must think differently about how we staff and fund our educational mission. As a newly unified, residential campus anticipating the opening of a dynamic new facility in Double Ground, our budget and staffing models need to support an evolving model of education at CCA - one that serves today’s and tomorrow’s students as we pursue our mission to "shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing."

Coming together and the work ahead

We recognize that these reductions will be felt by our entire community, and that CCA has experienced a great deal of change in recent years. The coming weeks will be a time for us to care for each other, not just as CCA employees but as colleagues and friends. We will honor the contract of collective bargaining for our union-represented staff as college leadership works with SEIU Local 1021.

We will move forward with thoughtfulness, urgency, and compassion, as we must complete our work by the beginning of the next fiscal year (July 1). We expect that the process of identifying the staff positions to be eliminated will take place over the next 45 days. I will share an update on our progress in mid-April, at which point we will have identified the affected departments and job families, and we'll be reaching out to SEIU Local 1021. We are hoping to share outcomes of these reductions in May as they impact specific positions.

It is important that we gather as a community to process this news and discuss the work ahead. The leadership team will host a staff and faculty town hall tomorrow at 11 am PDT to provide an overview of the process ahead and open the floor for questions. Please feel free to also submit questions in advance anonymously using this form, which will be available as a resource going forward. This meeting will be followed by sessions for managers to provide them with information and resources. We recognize that this announcement will generate many questions so we have created a Portal page for the full community to access, where we will post updates and maintain an FAQ area, which we have started and will add to as questions arise.

Focusing on our mission, our students

Over the past several years, together we have laid the foundation for a strong future for CCA, and I remain deeply optimistic about that future. We have hard work to do, balancing our budget while focusing on the quality of education - the excellence - that our students, faculty, alumni, and community expect of CCA.

Thank you for what you do for our students, particularly at such a critical time for our college. The work we do together in the coming weeks will strengthen CCA's financial position and our ability to deliver on our mission for today and tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Steve Beal