Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission is working to rescue almost 300 nursing students caught in limbo when ITT Technical Institutes shut its doors earlier this month, with Portland Community College possibly stepping in to take over the curriculum, allowing the students to to finish their educations and address the growing demand for nurses.
Ben Cannon, executive director of the commission, told Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, at a legislative budget hearing Wednesday that his office had been working with students and the state’s community colleges, and he believed a solution may have arisen with Portland Community College taking over the ITT program -- the Breckinridge School of Nursing in northeast Portland.
“PCC might be able to inherit the ITT nursing program,” Cannon said. “It will take cooperation with the accreditors and the Department of Education.”
He said of the number of regulatory hurdles and challenges that remain to help these students, the most significant was funding.
“The clarion call for the Legislature is to figure out how to fix it for these students,” Johnson said Friday. “I’d like to focus on these students and throw them a lifeline. … It isn’t the students’ fault. We have a crying need for nurses.”
In a letter Cannon sent to the students last Friday, he wrote that his office was exploring the possibility of working with ITT to allow a community college such as PCC to make use of the old ITT campus and use its instructors, which he said was a more practical route than switching the students to PCC’s existing curriculum and space for nursing education.
“While the barriers above are daunting, I continue to believe they are not completely unsolvable. We have made progress addressing some of these issues,” Cannon told the students. “Everyone involved continues to express an extraordinary degree of flexibility. The possibilities have not closed.”
Cannon received strong backing for an intervention and possible Legislative support from Johnson, who, with her characteristic flair, called his efforts heroic: “He genuinely cares about these kids. Through no fault of their own, they are now marooned in their pursuits,” she said.
It was unclear when PCC could start up classes, when funding might be available or where it would come from.
PCC classes start Monday. The Legislature is busy with elections less than 40 days away and will not open a new legislative session until February.
A chief reason the students attended ITT -- where costs per class were several times higher than Oregon’s community colleges -- was because enrollment at nursing programs at the state’s community colleges is artificially capped due to a lack of funding.
“These were people who couldn’t get into programs in their local community colleges because of space,” Cannon explained.
Sen. Rod Monroe, D-Portland, said that the state’s subsidies for community colleges were per credit, and not based on the cost or need of various programs.
“The funding doesn’t in anyway distinguish between these programs,” Monroe said. “We need the nurses.”
Jenn Baker, a lobbyist for the Oregon Nurses Association, said the community college programs struggle chiefly from a lack of qualified instructors, who need a master’s degree, and can make a lot more money in the field than what the colleges are able to pay them. She said her organization was drafting legislation with Rep. Caddy McKeown, D-Coos Bay, to restore $1 million in funding to a loan forgiveness program that aides nurses who are willing to work in the classroom.
Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, also supports this assistance for nursing faculty: “You earn maybe 60 to 65 percent as a teaching faculty compared to a practicing nurse.”
The current situation leaves Oregon’s community colleges unable to provide as many high-cost programs such as nursing as the state might need, leaving a niche for for-profit colleges like ITT.
“There were 277 students left in the program -- that’s not an insignificant number when you look at the whole picture,” said Baker. “We certainly hope they are able to transfer into other programs.”
Breckinridge was Oregon’s largest associate degree nursing program, but its graduates also had the second-lowest rate for passing the state nursing exams, according to the Oregon Board of Nursing website. The pass rate for Breckenridge’s students had been in steady decline, with the percentage of successful licensure candidates dropping each year. All 15 students passed the exam in 2012, but only 59 of 80, or 74 percent, passed in 2015.
The average pass rate among the state’s 17 programs is 90 percent. The most successful programs are Clatsop Community College, with a 100 percent pass rate and Linn-Benton Community College, with a 98 percent pass rate.
ITT shut down Sept. 6 after the for-profit technical college chain failed to meet the demands of the U.S. Department of Education, which had asked the school to put up $153 million in an escrow fund, almost twice the $78 million in cash on hand it reported in June.
The fund was meant to determine the school’s viability without federal support after the school’s accreditor found it out-of-compliance, which prompted the federal government to cut off financial aid for new students. Critics of the government’s actions said better oversight in recent years could have prevented circumstances that warranted a total shutdown.
Students who had been enrolled at ITT since May could be eligible for loan forgiveness, and the Higher Education Coordinating Commission has emailed all students to inform them about their transfer options as well as future financial aid prospects, said spokeswoman Endi Hartigan.
ITT had been under scrutiny for several years for its heavy reliance on the federal student loan program to provide almost all of its revenue, and also for its high tuition, misleading claims about job placement and a high student loan default rate.
