Community colleges face tough choices: Enrollment grows while resources shrink - JEANNIE KEVER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

This summer's record enrollments at community colleges across Texas is the classic good news-bad news story. It offers evidence of the value of the schools' dual mission of work force training and low-cost college credit. It also means the schools are collecting more money from tuition and fees. But tuition doesn't cover the entire cost of a student's education, and the schools face tough choices as property values stagnate and state funding drops, limiting their other sources of revenue. Houston Community College and Lone Star College have started to enforce class sizes more rigorously than in the past, canceling classes that don't draw enough students and increasing average class sizes.