Money issues on mind of COD leader

• Reprints

Updated: March 3, 2012 8:18AM

All things considered, the College of DuPage is doing pretty well, college President Robert L. Breuder told a group of area legislators over breakfast Friday morning.

But financial challenges loom just over the horizon.

“There’s an awful lot going on at the moment,” Breuder told the group in a conference room in the college’s Culinary and Hospitality Center.

Breuder listed a series of accomplishments to the college’s credit, including adding 30 certificate and 10 degree programs, increasing the college’s reserves by more than $50 million and working on $500 million in campus improvements.

Breuder also said that even in troubled economic times, the college’s enrollment is down only slightly.

However, the most significant accomplishment in his mind is the partnership the college has formed with four-year universities.

COD’s three-plus-one program allows students to obtain a bachelor’s degree from several local four-year institutions, including Lewis, Governors State, Roosevelt and Benedictine universities while at COD.

Breuder stressed that the discount to the student came to about 40 percent of the normal price of a four-year degree.

“We want to keep them here,” he said. “It’s better for DuPage County ... we have a better chance of employing them here.”

However, as much good news as there is to report from COD, Breuder didn’t sugarcoat potential problems lurking just around the corner for the largest community college in Illinois.

First, there is the problem of the state and its statutory responsibility to fund community college at one-third of the cost of operations. The state has made a habit of being late with its payments the last few years. Added to the state’s revenue problem are the Illinois property tax caps limiting local revenue and the statutory requirement to limit tuition to one-third its per-capita operating expenses.

Tuition is $132 per semester hour, and without additional revenue, the college may be faced with either significantly raising tuition or making program cutbacks in the near future.

Then there is the state’s well-know problem with unfunded pensions. Illinois contributes $17 million to COD for pensions and Breuder warned that if the state tries to put the full responsibility on community colleges, the effects could be devastating.

Breuder noted some of the costs of operating non-academic programs, among them WDCB radio ($750,000), the McAninch Performing Arts Center ($500,000) and COD athletic programs ($400,000 to $500,000), and pointed out how some community colleges had recently decided to eliminate their football programs.

Breuder said that if similar cuts were made at COD, “you wouldn’t want to be around here ... we have to deal with that internally.”