Fundraising trickles down to community colleges.

Economically speaking, it's ugly out there. With the economy in a free fall, budgets are being slashed to the bone.

More unemployed workers are returning to school, particularly to community colleges, for retraining while traditional funding sources are drying up. Two-year college leaders who have traditionally relied on county and state funds for a large chunk of their budgets are turning to fundraising as a strategy to not only survive, but thrive.

Both Patricia Gentile, dean of continuing education and resource development at New Jersey's Atlantic Cape Community College, and Para Jones, VP for advancement planning and college community relations at Ohio's Stark State College of Technology, know the pressure is on to help keep their schools in the black. At the University of Nebraska's Women in Educational Leadership conference in October, they shared data from their studies on community college presidents and fundraising.

Gentile and Jones conducted two separate qualitative studies as part of their dissertations. Gentile sought to determine how New Jersey's community college presidents were responding to the financial crisis, and their perceptions of fundraising as a viable financial strategy. Jones explored the factors impacting success in community college fundraising.

Nationally, public funding for higher education is way down. New Jersey provides 16% of a two-year school's budget in the form of direct support for pensions and benefits and some building construction costs. Local funds for higher ed in New Jersey average 20% of a school's budget, about the same as the national average.

How does the current economy affect these funds and ultimately the schools and students they serve?

Gentile's research in New Jersey