The Senate Finance Committee agreed to add a committee substitute for the committee substitute for Senate Bill 1, 3 p.m. Thursday, Jan 17.
During the committee, the bill was reviewed and highly discussed between Senators. One in particular, Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, showed concern over Senate Bill 1, which would increase access to career education and workforce training through Associate’s Degrees at community and technical colleges.
“We’ve got a relatively fragile higher education system in West Virginia,” Prezioso said. “We have so many students that have the opportunity to choose education from several different sources of higher education. As we pit one group against the other we’re not exactly enhancing students. It seems as though we’re taking students that intend to go one and we’re dividing them.”
Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of Community Technical College Systems, assured the committee that the bill isn’t intended to divide students but help create easier pathways for students.
“This is an attempt to make pathways for more open for students so they could potentially start at a community college,” Tucker said.
Prezioso addressed the Chancellor and asked if the committee could potentially amend the bill to apply it to Associate’s Degrees at four year colleges in addition to two year college and technical programs.
Tucker said she and her peers would be more than happy if the committee amended the current bill, but was concerned that including regional schools would put too much strain on the bill. Tucker explained that the bill was also introduced last year with the inclusion of four year regional programs and said that was one of the reasons why the bill didn’t pass.
The current fiscal note on the bill stands at $7,677,294.
Tucker also explained that a similar proposal was recently put into place in Tennessee where higher education system saw a four percent increase in community college enrollment. She said that although many people believe this bill would mainly affect students who are currently enrolled in a four–year program, she said the bill could also encourage more people to start a two-year program.
“We need to acknowledge that 55 percent of the state’s recent high school graduates are said to not be going anywhere,” Tucker told the committee. “I think this bill could help us target people who had no other plan. It’s vital that we don’t leave those people out of the conversation.”
