When students at Whatcom Community College (WCC) opened the class schedule this term, some instantly knew something was wrong. Sections they’d counted on were gone, waitlists were longer than ever, and familiar instructors had quietly disappeared from the catalog.
“I built my whole two‑year plan around certain classes,” said business major Ashley Mofield. “This year I logged in, and two of my required classes just weren’t there. It wasn’t an email or a warning — they were just gone. For me, that’s another quarter of tuition and rent I have to figure out.”
For many students, statewide budget debates in Olympia don’t feel abstract. They show up as canceled sections, outdated computers, and fewer people behind the front desk when they need help.
The biggest change students point to is the shrinking class schedule.
“Last year I could make a full‑time schedule that fit around my job,” Mofield said. “Now I’m patching together credits from whatever’s left, and it doesn’t always match what I actually need for my degree.”
Some students say they’re already planning for extra quarters, even if they’re technically “on track” on paper. Running Start student Thomas Partain said the uncertainty is especially stressful when you’re also trying to finish high school.
“I’m juggling high school requirements and college credits at the same time,” Partain said. “When a class gets cut or moved to a time I can’t make it because of my high school schedule, that’s not just inconvenient. It can wreck my graduation plan.”
For students who rely on financial aid, every added quarter is another round of fees, textbooks and transportation.
Students also describe changes in advising and front‑line support — not always as “closed offices,” but as a slow stretching of people and time.
“My adviser has been great, but they’re clearly overwhelmed,” Mofield said. “You email, you wait. You try to book an appointment, but the first openings are weeks away. When classes are changing, and you’re worried about graduating on time, that waiting feels like forever.”
Partain said he’s heard similar concerns from classmates trying to navigate Running Start rules, financial aid, and transfer questions. “It feels like the people who are here care,” Partain said. “There just aren’t enough of them to cover everything students need.”
Causes for the Budget Cuts
While students feel the impact on campus, the decisions are being shaped off campus — in budget proposals and legislative language that most students never see.
A recent update from the Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents many higher‑ed staff, describes three supplemental state budgets that would all cut higher‑education funding even further, though by different amounts. The governor’s plan would cut more from the big research universities and 1.5% from other institutions, while House and Senate plans apply 1.5% cuts across the board, with some relief for Evergreen State College after earlier reductions.
In the House budget, a short section tells the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to study the current number of colleges and recommend reducing at least one institution in the system. The board is tasked with looking at consolidations, district structures, and where campuses are located — in other words, whether one or more community or technical colleges could be closed or merged.
Most WCC students haven’t read that provision, but they understand what “consolidation” could mean for their lives. When students hear that the state is studying which community or technical college might be reduced, it raises a basic question: Could their campus be on that list?
“Even if they don’t mean Whatcom specifically, just hearing ‘We’re going to reduce at least one college’ makes my stomach drop,” Partain said. “I don’t have the money or the time to start over somewhere else. I picked this college for a reason — because it’s close enough and affordable enough to actually work.”
Mofield said the conversation about “redundancy” doesn’t match how students experience campus. “They talk about ‘reducing redundancy’ like we’re spreadsheets,” she said. “But to us, our college is not redundant. It’s our shot.”
For students who already commute, work jobs, and care for family, moving programs farther away or onto fewer campuses doesn’t look like efficiency — it looks like an exit ramp out of school.
The Institution Sustainability Review
Last fall, President Justin Guillory requested the Institution Sustainability Reviews (ISR) for all programs and disciplines, according to Barry Maxwell, WCC’s Union President and Political Science Professor.
The goal of these reviews, according to Ben Kohn, a German Language and Humanities Professor, was to examine “what can be cut? What should be saved? What is important for the mission of the college? And here are ways to reimagine or reinvent our discipline, to increase enrollments in there and not spend as much money.”
Barry Maxwell, a Political Science Professor, explained how discipline leads had two weeks to complete the reviews.
“Tell us about your program, and there’s some data,” said Maxwell, as he described the ISR process. “Can you give us more about what we think it costs, and how many students are passing through. Is it growing? Is it shrinking? Each of those things? And whatever else you want to tell us.”
This material was then given to the ISR Core Team. As the Union President, Maxwell was a part of the ISR Core team alongside “one faculty person, a bunch of administrators, and representatives from each employee group.”
Ultimately, this team had the job to give a list of recommendations for what could be discontinued to save money.
According to the Cascadia Daily, the list that came back from President Guillory included “Applied business management; finance; hospitality and tourism business management; parenting education; retail management; software development; and visual communication. The disciplines of dance and Humanities 101 and 106 will also be discontinued.”
Maxwell explained that “we were somewhat surprised when, at the very end of the quarter, the list came out, and these are the programs we’re looking at for potentially getting run up.”
Two Programs Affected by Cuts: the “Reduction in Force” Process
One WCC program popular amongst students confirmed to be cut is Visual Communication.
Kevin Baier, Visual Communications Instructor, wanted students to know that “the VisComm program will still run next year in the 2026-27 school year. This is 100% happening! All the announcements from the admin make it sound like it is over immediately, but that is not the case.”
While Visual Communications students who are already in the program will have the opportunity to finish their degrees, no new students will be enrolled in the program next year.
Additionally, the Drama department is facing a reduction in the number of classes offered.
Nicholas Potter, an instructor in the English department, noted that each quarter the Drama class had a 90% occupancy rate. Many students were left confused and frustrated about why this program was cut when it was doing so well.
“I only found out about it through word of mouth,” said Gabriel Panis, a second-year student at Whatcom Community College. “It gives me little hope for future decisions because of the secrecy behind this one.”
Drama and Film Instructor Gerald Large was also subject to a Reduction in Force (RIF) – the first in the college’s history.
McOmber, McOmber, and Luber described a RIF as “the permanent termination of employees due to restructuring, the elimination of their department, or a lack of funding or available work to support those employees.”
Faculty members who are RIF’d can be hired back as an adjunct, which is a part-time instructor hired by the college on a quarterly contract basis.
The RIF that stripped Large of his tenure was able to save about $70,000, according to both Maxwell and Kohn.
Maxwell and Kohn both also pointed out that WCC gave two 36,000 retention bonuses to the Executive VP for Business and College Operations and Executive Director for Office of the President to help guide WCC President Justin Gillory step into his first year as the college’s President. They noted that between the two bonuses, which total $72,000, the progress made from RIF’ing Large is lost.
Kohn questioned why the Board of Trustees approved such unprecedented bonuses, while at the same time offering $35,000 above the median college president’s salary in Washington State to President Guillory.
“I think that a higher salary level should indicate that our President has the ability to lead without any unnecessary and expensive hand-holding,” said Kohn.
Kathi Hiyane-Brown, our college’s former president, was paid $273,447 in her final year, which is eleven thousand less than our current president in his first year. Some feel this is another expense that uses money students need to keep their programs running.
Large has been a part of the WCC family for 25 years, and teaches in classes that regularly have a fill rate upwards of 90%. Kohn said. “To trade those administrative pay raises during a fiscal crisis for the position of a 25-year full-time tenured faculty is both heartless and wrong.”
“I mean, you wouldn’t believe some of the productions [Large] did. They were brilliant,’ explained Kohn. “And absolutely are drawing people from the community just to come here to watch the productions.”
Large himself was eager to let WCC students know that drama classes will still “continue as normal. The only drama class that has been dropped from the schedule is Drama Production.”
Large also noted that the administrative “decision to remove my status as a tenured professor of Drama had nothing to do with me personally or professionally. There have been no student or colleague complaints concerning my role at the college. It was a financial decision made by the administration.”
“WCC’s East Wing Ballroom”
As some know, a new building is being constructed near the Learning Commons and Kelly Hall, which is described by the State of Washington Department of Enterprise Services as a “new 52,000-gsf Technology & Engineering Center (TEC) will serve as a technology-rich hub for computer science, computer information systems, IT networking, cybersecurity, engineering, and transitional learning program types.”
Administration and other groups are quick to point out that the construction of this building comes from an entirely different pool of money than the one that is being cut. Maxwell also noted that the TEC is “going to be paid for by state funds that are not part of our Whatcom budget.” He added that this was also the case for other buildings on campus, such as the relatively new Learning Commons.
However, this begs the question of why the state can find money for buildings, but not for classes and student services.
Also, just because this building is paid for by the state doesn’t mean the college won’t have to take over the bills.
The WCC TEC PreDesign Report explains how the 2028 fiscal year will be when WCC takes over payments of the TEC building. The cost is estimated to be $791,295 and will only increase per year after that.
As a result, some feel that the TEC is nothing more than an “unnecessary prestige project” – with Kohn also labeling it as “WCC’s East Wing Ballroom.”
How should WCC approach further cuts?
In their update, the Washington Federation of State Employees warns that repeated cuts create a “false promise” of access: students are encouraged to enroll, but the support they need to finish — staff, technology, course options — are slowly stripped away.
On campus, that idea rings familiar.
“We’re told community college is accessible because tuition is lower,” Mofield said. “But if classes are full, the tech is broken and there aren’t enough advisers to help us plan, that’s not real access. It’s like handing you a key to a door that only sometimes opens.”
Partain put it more bluntly: “They say the system is working because people sign up. I think we should measure it by how many of us actually make it to the finish line.”
With many departments facing up to an additional 10% cut in classes, students registering for future classes do not know whether certain classes will be eligible for enrollment.
Unions and advocacy groups are urging lawmakers to choose a different path. One idea on the table is a “Millionaires Tax” that would raise new revenue from very high incomes to prevent cuts and reduce the risk of campus closures. Supporters are asking people to contact legislators, testify and sign petitions backing that tax and opposing higher‑ed cuts.
Those are advocacy efforts — they’re not neutral, and not every student or community member will agree with them. But the underlying facts are clear: state leaders are weighing options that include both cutting higher‑education budgets and raising new revenue, and the decisions they make this session will shape what campuses like WCC look like for years.
For now, students say they want something simple: to be included in the conversation.
“I get that budgets are complicated,” Mofield said. “But it should be just as complicated to decide whether I can finish my degree.”
Partain agreed. “If they’re going to talk about which colleges are ‘redundant,’” he said, “they should have to look us in the eye while they do it.”
The Horizon reached out to college administrators and the WCC’s Director for Communications & Marketing for comments on the budget cuts and their potential impact on students. Still, no one was available or willing to provide a statement.
This article was written collaboratively by Tidricus Williams, Braxton Craven, Soren Chavez, and Bryce Harbin. Copy-edited by Joanna Kenyon.
This article was initially published in the Horizon’s sixth magazine issue, with a release date of April 22, 2026. Please check out the magazine on the newsstands while copies last!
Updates:
On Tues., April 28, 2026, WCC President Guillory sent a college-wide email announcing considerable restructuring to various student services staff positions – impacting Student Life, the Intercultural Center, the Library, and the Learning Center.
On Wed., April 29, 2026, the Horizon production classes were removed from the 26-27 schedule, and an email was sent to the English Department Chair notifying of this scheduling update, which was also attributed to the budget cuts.
