Community Colleges Could Lose Big During Budget Cuts - Maggie Alexander, Wake

One group that will feel major impacts of the cuts will be higher education at the community college level. "We can't cut out supplies and equipment very much otherwise we wouldn't be able to train the people appropriately for the skills," explained Wake Tech President Stephen Scott. Scott said he is also concerned about making cuts at a time when enrollment keeps rising. "We are already serving 12.5 percent more students than we were funded for this current year," said Scott. Scott says the North Carolina Community College system has a budget of about one billion dollars, therefore a 15 percent cut would be $150 million. He says it's too early to predict what will have to go to cut that much money from the budget.