On a Kansas map, the service regions for the state’s 19 community colleges are pretty straightforward. But Barton Community College’s reach extends well beyond the official area of Barton, Ellsworth, Pawnee, Rice, Rush, Russell and Stafford counties. These days, Barton instructors can be found at Grandview Plaza in Geary County, Fort Riley and now Fort Leavenworth.
Recently, when fall enrollment figures showed BCC was now the fourth largest community college in the state, Barton President Dr. Carl Heilman credited the college’s outreach for an enrollment growth of more than 11 percent, while most of the other Kansas community colleges showed little or no growth from 2012.
“Barton’s faculty and staff have been diligent over the past several years in assessing enrollment opportunities that are in keeping with the institutional mission and when addressing industry needs,” Heilman said. “This has included the continued expansion of online learning program development, the recent agreement with Fort Leavenworth to provide onsite education service and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s designation of Barton as a regional safety training provider.”
Two years ago, Barton trustees added this statement to BCC's official policy: “The College Mission will be supported by the strategic development of service regions.”
Heilman said classes offered to military personnel and their families meet the criteria of minimizing local tax reliance and complimenting the growth of student learning services.
“It can be argued that it keeps the mill levy down – it keeps it flat for Barton County,” Heilman said. According to the 2013 “Community Report” recently published by the college, the 32.77 mill levy would need to be 34.90 if BCC didn’t have its Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth campuses, which brought in about $546,574 in revenue over expenditures last year. Figuring each mill brought $257,271 in local tax dollars in 2012, college officials say the extra revenue reduced the local tax by approximately 2.12 mills.
The added enrollment has other positive effects, Heilman said. “It allows us to provide additional services.”
Bill Nash, dean of Fort Riley Technical Education and Military Outreach Training, talks about one of those services. BCC’s Hazardous Materials and Emergency Services operation at Grandview Plaza was selected as an official OSHA education center. “This nationally recognized designation enables Barton to not only provide OSHA training to the state of Kansas, but throughout Region VII (Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri),” he said in the “Community Report.”
Dean of Information Services Charles Perkins said the college is cautious about expanding into other areas. “It should bring in revenue to offset local property taxes,” he said. There also needs to be a demand for a new course before creating one.
Perkins noted that the college used to try to receive one-third of its funding from the state, one-third from taxes and one-third from tuition, but state aid hasn’t kept up with the costs of providing higher education. “Students are bearing more and more of the load,” he said.