Accounting Error Puts Colleges’ State Funds at Risk : Education: Enrollment was miscalculated for 1994-95 school year, dropping student population below vital threshold.

Battered by declining enrollment, the Ventura County Community College District stands to lose as much as $1.2 million in state funding over the next three years, trustees learned this week.

Officials had believed that enrollment at the district’s three campuses was high enough during the 1994-95 school year to satisfy a state requirement that college districts maintain a set number of full-time students in order to receive state money.

But earlier this week, Vice Chancellor of Instruction Jeff Marsee told the board that that belief was based on an accounting error, which showed the district with 500 more full-time students than it actually had.

The corrected numbers show that the district will have about 400 students below the minimum required for state funding rather than 100 students above it, Marsee said.

Upon hearing the news, board members vowed to find ways to attract new students and avoid losing the funds.

“If we can’t recoup the enrollment, then it will have a serious impact on the district,” Trustee Timothy Hirschberg said. The district “will have to continue to downsize.”

The state pays college districts about $3,000 for each full-time student but penalizes them if they do not maintain a certain level of enrollment, which is set after the school year is over. A full-time student is defined as one who carries 15 units a semester, or a combination of part-time students who take 15 units.

Trustees are still waiting to find out from the California Department of Finance what the cap is for the 1994-95 school year, but they expect it to be about 19,100. Figures made public this week show enrollment at the district’s campuses--Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark--to have been 18,720 during the past school year. That is down 3% from the 1993-94 school year.

In order to meet the enrollment levels set by the state, college districts can “borrow” summer school students to beef up enrollment during the regular school year. The districts may include summer school students in enrollment figures for either the previous or the upcoming years.

In the Ventura County district, officials borrowed 500 students from the summer of 1994 to boost enrollment for the 1993-94 school year. But district officials forgot to subtract those students from 1994-95 enrollment figures.

“It’s sad when you put education in this situation where you have to gamble,” Trustee John Tallman said.

District officials estimate that the miscalculation could cost the district at least $500,000 and possibly as much as $1.2 million over the next three years.

One way to avoid losing state funding is to raise enrollment for the 1994-95 school year to the level required by the state.

District officials say the most immediate way to do that would be to again “borrow” students, this time adding students from the summer of 1995 to the 1994-95 school year. But officials must eventually find a way to increase enrollment to make up for the loss.

“It really ends up just postponing the problem,” said acting Chancellor James Walker. “For our district, the real problem is in the long term.”

The district has formed an enrollment management committee to address the problem.

Enrollment has declined steadily since 1992, when the state began increasing fees. Since then, fees have risen from $6 per unit to $13 for students without bachelor’s degrees and to $50 a unit for students with those degrees.

With fees expected to increase $15 per unit this fall, trustees are scrambling to find ways to attract new students.

“We need to stop business as usual and offer schedules and classes that the students are demanding,” said Hirschberg, who advocates providing more classes that transfer to four-year colleges.

The enrollment committee will launch a more aggressive marketing campaign while looking to provide more off-campus classes and certificate programs.

But Walker said many factors are beyond the district’s control.

“The most we can do is make it easier and more attractive to enroll,” Walker said. “Frankly, it’s still the best deal in town. But you can’t drag people kicking and screaming to the college.”