A $10 million reduction in federal funds, plus little financial support from the state could lead to program cuts, fewer students and employees at Pima Community College, officials say.
The frozen and disappearing federal funds are cause for re-evaluation and concern, says Pima Community College Governing Board Chairman Greg Taylor.
“The financial pressure on the college is much more acute than it has ever has been,” Taylor said. “When you look at that larger perspective, this is not just a federal issue. That’s just what’s happening right now. This has also been a long period of disinvestment from the state and in community colleges, specifically in Maricopa and Pima that haven’t received those dollars.”
At Wednesday’s governing board meeting, officials broke down the federal funding deficit:
- $1 million in CCAMPIS child-care funding — This program (Child-Care Access Means Parents In School) is one of the ways Pima helps student-parents attend class.
- $1.7 million in TRIO Upward Bound grants — These stopped over the summer and support first-generation and low-income students. Pima has appealed the decision to the Department of Education.
- $3.35 million in adult education funds were frozen — This money has been released, but is now left out of the Fiscal Year 2026 federal budget that is to be approved by Sept. 30.
- $4.1 million in Hispanic-Serving Institution grants — These dollars are used for all students and the $10.4 million total from this fiscal year is on the chopping block as the federal government said last month it will not defend the 23-year-old program against a lawsuit, which could end it. A Hispanic-Serving Institution is a school where at least 25% of full-time undergraduates are Hispanic. Pima’s enrollment was 50% Latino in fall 2023, according to its online demographics page.
The solutions to the potential funding shortage are short term, said board member Karla Bernal Morales.
“How to continue to support our community and create access to high-quality education? We need support from industry partners, members of the community that can do more,” she said. “It is going to be a challenge. There’s only so much we can do. We don’t want to lose sight of what is important.”
In June, Pima’s governing board did not raise tuition nor property taxes and approved a $332.7 million budget.
Pima is primarily funded by property taxes and tuition money currently, Taylor said. During the recession, Arizona greatly defunded community colleges in Pima and Maricopa counties as part of surviving the recession and that maintenance and operations money has never returned. (Money for rural colleges did return.) For PCC, the loss of those operating funds over the last 16 years would be about $209 million, Taylor said.
“Community college funding is supposed to be a three-legged stool,” Taylor said. “It’s supposed to be state funds or federal dollars as one leg and then property taxes as another and then tuition and fees as the third leg. So we’ve been balancing on two legs of that stool, basically for since FY09.”
Pima reports 11 straight semesters of growth. Its enrollment was nearly 32,000 full and part-time students in 2023, according to an Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System report. A full-time in-state student taking 30 credit hours during the academic year paid about $3,000 in tuition, according to Pima’s 2024 financial report.
Enrollment continues to increase, with the number of students up 4% this past spring and an 11% increase last summer, Pima says. And, the school is still on track for accreditation to start its first bachelor’s program in elementary and special education next fall, Taylor said.
For now the college is assessing how to proceed, including talking with private donors, Taylor said. “The money might be there or it might not be and so we’re just kind of stuck until we can get some more certainty federally about what we can expect,” he said.
“I think that in terms of investments and like economic mobility and people’s ability to better their lives and better their condition, those are incredibly beneficial investments,” he said. “So I would be very concerned if the federal government stopped investing in that. But again that would put us in a place where we have to look at what can we do. And I don’t have an answer for that right now. The college is doing that analysis and figuring out what options might be if that goes away. But it would deeply trouble me if it does go away. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t invest in that as a society.”
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