No tuition increases for VA community colleges in 2022-23; can CCs leverage the weak link approach to dramatically increase donations?

Last week, the State Board for Community Colleges approved flat tuition and fees for SY 2022-23. This is a boon to families and individuals across the state.

This is the fifth year in a row of level funding; state legislators made it possible to hold the line in 2022-23 with $24 million pumped into the system to cover the rising costs including personnel. (See Virginia’s community colleges will keep tuition cost flat for 5th straight year)

But the question for the future remains: How will community colleges remain accessible to the more than 140,000 people who enroll each year, particularly given the value proposition that is shown to the right in a comment on the Virginia sub-reddit (Virginia’s community colleges will keep tuition cost flat for 5th straight year)?

Malcolm Gladwell considered this topic in 2016 in the Revisionist History podcast entitled My Little Hundred Million. Story hero Hank Rowan, a successful businessman in New Jersey, is contrasted with the fundraisers of Stanford and other elite institutions.

In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan’s example?

Gladwell’s take is interesting and it should challenge us all to think about whether we are strong or weak link supporters and, more importantly, if we put our money where our philosophical approach to the world is.