Discussion: Dealing With Unanticipated Costs

Read the following case study:

You are the Student Services manager at a small community college located near a large university in the urban center of your city. As you near the end of the spring semester, your president informs the college faculty and staff that the local university is responding to the recent state budget cuts by significantly increasing its tuition and capping the number of new students it will admit this coming fall. The president believes that this situation will result in many more students coming to your college, requiring more class sections of most introductory courses. She convenes a group of faculty and staff to work on the issue, and asks you to participate.

At your task force's first meeting, you come up with the following options for addressing this problem, and need to provide the president with an estimate of the cost-effectiveness of each option. What are the types of costs that would be required to implement each?

Begin offering introductory courses via distance learning, which your college has never done

Add more sections of introductory courses, taught by adjunct faculty, and locate them in leased temporary classroom "trailers" situated on the college's parking lots, reducing the amount of parking available to students and staff

Negotiate a shared-facility agreement with the nearby university to use classrooms in the evenings and on weekends when they are not in use by university classes

Increase class sizes in introductory courses from 20 to 30

Postan argument supporting one option or a combination of options you would recommend. Also, evaluate the implications of such a measure on your department and the college. Be sure to support your response with references to this week's Learning Resources.