3:29pm | Superintendent and President Eloy Oakley told a large crowd Friday that Long Beach City College must do more with less, and make “transformative changes” to continue providing necessary support to community college students.

Oakley made the remarks during the 2011 State of the College Address on the school’s campus. The meat of his speech focused on how LBCC must adapt to an ongoing statewide financial crisis that will likely see more education cuts when Governor Jerry Brown releases his budget proposal.

“We must make fundamental and large-scale changes to our programs to enable many more of our students to complete [their degrees] – and do so in much less time than it takes currently,” Oakley said.

More students transferred to UC and CSU campuses in 2010 than they did in 2009, Oakley said, which is a praiseworthy accomplishment considering both systems cut back admissions to save costs. He said that the college has grown accustomed to less financial support from the state. Revenues to the LBCC general fund have declined by more than $12 million in the last two years.

“Increasing success with less support is the new normal,” he said. The school faces challenging times ahead as employee benefit costs have increased by $1.5 million over the same period. Oakley called that situation “frightening.”

“There is no way the college can remain solvent without finding ways to reduce our fixed costs when revenues from the state are declining,” Oakley said. “This is why we have begun working with our employees to help control rising benefit costs in coming years.”