DRYDEN — The president of Tompkins Cortland Community College says the school is facing some challenges in his yearly report to lawmakers.

In his State of the College message, President Carl Haynes laid out enrollment and funding issues at TC3, which he says go hand in hand in creating tough times for community colleges. Haynes also called for more state money for TC3 and its fellow schools, which he says only provides about a quarter of their funding when it should be at least a third.

Haynes says the problems are also due to the national tone on education.

“A lot of the stories you see questioning the value of higher education link it closely to the debt load people wind up with,” he said. “That’s not what happens with community college students. Maybe half of our students will graduate with some kind of debt load, but nowhere near the kind of debt talked about in many media stories.”

Haynes says one of the college’s top priorities this year is to put more programs in place meant to retain students and get more people to enroll. He described some of those measures, including scholarships, and the difficulties behind them.

“These are funded programs that are very labor-intensive investments we’re making in helping students to really get through those initial few weeks of the semester in a decent level of economic success,” he said. “If you don’t have some other kind of grant sources, it can be very difficult to provide that extra kind of help that students need.”

Haynes said there have been some bright spots recently at TC3, including work on a child care center and student involvement in community projects. But he says he knows times are tough financially for both Tompkins and Cortland Counties, and he’s only expecting a possibly modest increase in funding from them this year.