NCC students: Gov's leaving them 'out in the cold'

A year ago, 23-year-old William May lost his job managing a welding supply company in Westbury. So, the young father decided to join his wife, Kara, 21, as a student at Nassau Community College in Garden City.

Affording school while having to support a 3-year-old has been a challenge for the Mays, though. Last semester, William, who is aiming to become a doctor someday, had trouble affording textbooks for a science class, each costing $150 to $200. He didn't buy the books and instead read them at the NCC library.

Kara, who is working toward a paralegal certificate, said that he "could only spend so much time in the library," particularly because he cares for their son, Liam, on days when he has no class. William often was unable to complete the required readings and fell behind in his work. He finished the science class, but not nearly to the best of his abilities.

Now, with Governor Paterson proposing across-the-board cuts to community colleges statewide, students like the Mays are wondering whether they will be able to continue school or be forced to drop out. Already, they say, they depend almost entirely on financial aid to fund their education, which runs $450 per course, excluding books and fees. They have little to no income and depend on the generosity of relatives to make ends meet. The Mays live with William's parents in Levittown. They cannot afford daycare for Liam.

The governor is proposing to cut $53.3 million in funding for SUNY community colleges in the 2010-11 fiscal year that will begin in September. That would equate to $285 per full-time student and would follow a recent midyear reduction in community college funding of $12.1 million. Funding decreases, students say, inevitably mean tuition hikes that many say they cannot afford.

Last Friday, Kara May joined a dozen NCC students at the college's student center to protest the governor's proposed cut. The students, members of the New York Public Interest Research Group and the student government at NCC, collected more than 1,400 signatures in a petition against the cuts.

Among the students was Samantha Wagner, a West Hempstead 21-year-old who grew up in Oceanside. Wagner dropped out of high school and earned her General Equivalency Diploma at NCC. She said she hopes to attend a four-year college after completing her associate's degree at NCC. But Wagner's mother, her sole source of support, was laid off from her job as a floral designer in mid-December after 16 years. Now Wagner's struggling financially.

"It is important as ever to my family that I complete my education," said Wagner, NYPIRG's part-time project coordinator. If community college dollars are further reduced -- and Wagner loses even part of her financial aid -- "I may be forced to drop out," she said.

"The governor wants to leave students out in the cold," Wagner continued. "Stunted economic growth and reduced access to higher education - that's what we'll have if the state cuts financial aid and cuts community colleges when the state needs them most."

With 22,000 full-time students, Nassau Community College has seen an enrollment spike during the recent recession as young people have sought more affordable alternatives to four-year degrees at private institutions or state schools.

Paterson, meanwhile, says cuts to community colleges are needed to help balance a $7.4 billion deficit in the state's $134 billion budget. "Since the day I became governor, I have warned that New York is facing an inevitable fiscal reckoning," Paterson recently wrote on his Web site. "There are no easy answers. We cannot keep spending money that we do not have. Significant spending reductions are necessary if we want to emerge from this crisis and build a strong fiscal and economic recovery."

Recovery, he said, will come with "shared sacrifice."

NCC students, however, say that cuts to community colleges would disproportionately affect the most vulnerable young people –– those from low-income families who cannot afford to take on heavy student loan debt, but who are committed to completing a higher education.

Students like 28-year-old Blenda Gist. She's a single mother from Westbury supporting a 10-year-old son. She said her hope is to "give him a better start" in life than she had. She never knew her father, and her mother died when she was 5. Raised in Brooklyn, she was taken in by relatives, who did not support her when she reached high school. "I've been on my own since I was 15," Gist said.

Gist said she has depended heavily on credit cards to support her son since starting school and cannot afford to take a student loan. "No one knows what to do," she said.

Sarah Moeller, 25, NYPIRG's full-time project coordinator, graduated from Towson University in Baltimore in 2007. She said many young people are taking on "an insane amount of debt" in order to afford a college education. Moeller, who lives at home with her parents in Massapequa because she cannot afford her own place, has $50,000 in student loan debt.

"It's really hard," Moeller said. "It's a huge generational difference. Parents don't understand what it's like being in that kind of debt in your early 20s."

Wagner said, "Enough is enough. Instead of cutting higher education again, the [state] Legislature should fight for the funding SUNY needs to protect quality [education] and avoid another tuition hike."

Nassau Community College

by the numbers

Founded: 1959

Tuition per 12-credit semester,

excluding books and fees: $1,811

Number of full-time students: 22,000

Continuing education students: 15,000

Acres: 225

Fields of study: 60

Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.