BUTLER TWP - Administrators at Butler County Community College welcome a review of their performance by state officials.

They just want to make sure that review is done fairly.

Earlier this week, community colleges were told by the state Department of Education their performance soon will come under greater government scrutiny. The government plans to use certain data to determine if community colleges are doing their jobs adequately.

Gerald Zahorchak, the education department's executive deputy secretary, said the new evaluations will help guide efforts by Gov. Ed Rendell's administration to improve job-training programs, which will soak up a large part of this year's budget increase.

BC3 is one of Pennsylvania's 14 community colleges.

BC3 president Cynthia Azari said a lot of the information the state is requesting colleges to submit won't be a problem for BC3 to generate because most of it already is compiled for use by BC3 administrators.

"We collect a lot of it already; we just use it in different ways than what they plan to use it for," she said.

Starting July 1, 2006, two-year community colleges will be required to provide the education department with student retention and graduation rates, as well as data on job placement and employer satisfaction. Both the governor and the state Legislature will receive that information.

Azari said it is unclear now whether state officials will use the information to determine the amount of state funding community colleges receive.

Community colleges enroll about 400,000 students a year in Pennsylvania in both credit and noncredit programs. They also provide short-term job training in specialized fields and are a low-cost stepping stone to four-year colleges.

The state budget for 2006 includes a 10-percent increase in community college funding, which is the highest in 15 years. Those funds are part of the administration's "Job Ready Pennsylvania" initiative.

Azari said she has no trouble providing information on job placement and employer satisfaction, but she isn't sure it's fair to judge a community college's performance based on graduation rates and student retention.

"They want good rates, and I can understand that," she said. "But a lot of students come here to improve on skills or to take a few required classes, not earn an associate's degree. So (graduates) wouldn't be a fair assessment of how we're doing if earning an associate's degree was never a student's goal."

She also said it might be hard to track 100 percent of her graduates once they leave campus to gather the employer satisfaction and job placement rates.

"We just don't know if the state expects us to keep track of 15 percent of our graduates or 100 percent of them," Azari said. "If it's 100 percent, that could prove challenging for us."

Azari said community colleges have different missions than four-year institutions, and she's worried that judging them based on the same criteria four-year institutions are graded on will not provide a fair assessment.

"We have a different mission here, and a lot of the kids who come to us are not college material," she said. "Some of them need extra help and tutoring when they come here, and that isn't being accounted for under this assessment system."

Azari said she and other community college presidents are looking for clarification.

"I think right now what we're asking for is some clarification on some of the items," she said. "And we need it now, because if they want their first report for Sept. 1, 2006, we need to start collecting the data now."