Following the release of an investigative audit against Southwestern Michigan College, other Michigan community colleges are taking a closer look at the way they do business.

In February, the Auditor General released a report that found SMC guilty of wrongdoing by excluding part-time student workers from contributing to the Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System. The audit alleges that from July 1, 2010, through April 28, 2017, SMC intentionally excluded approximately 500 part-time student employees from enrollment into MPSERS, a retirement fund for public school employees in the state of Michigan. The audit also alleged that the college could owe between $388,600 and $10.4 million in fees and interest for not including part time student workers into MPSERS.

SMC President David Mathews has continually denied wrongdoing in the matter, pointing to the fact that full-time students are specially exempted by statute from contributing into MPSERS and that many community colleges have historically followed the same practice as SMC.

According to Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency, 16 of the state’s 28 community colleges currently do not include all part-time student workers into MPSERS. These colleges include: SMC, Lake Michigan College, Delta College, Gogebic Community College, Henry Ford College, Jackson College, Kellogg Community College, Macomb Community College, Monroe Community College, Mott Community College, Muskegon Community College, North Central Michigan College, Oakland Community College, Schoolcraft College, Washtenaw Community College and West Shore Community College.

However, after the audit against SMC was released, at least one school is changing its practice of not including part-time student workers into MPSERS.

Lake Michigan College President Trevor Kubatzke said that officials at the college are planning to pay any fees owed to the Office of Retirement services from the years that part-time student workers were not included into the retirement system. He also said that if legislation currently pending in the Michigan Congress to explicitly exempt part-time student workers from MPSERS does not pass, LMC will begin to make contributions into MPSERS for every part-time student worker over the age of 19.

“We want to follow the law. Submit to the ORS what is owed,” Kubatzke said. “Our stance is that if we owe it, we owe it, and we will do the right thing moving forward.”

According to Kubatzke, who has been LMC president for nearly one year, no one currently in the LMC administration made the decision to exclude part-time student workers from MPSERS, adding that as soon as the information included in the audit against SMC was made public, the college consulted a labor attorney to define its next steps. The lawyer advised that LMC should have been making payments into MPSERS all along.

“What we are doing now is going back and calculating every student worker that should have been added in [to MPSERS],” Kubatzke said. “As you can imagine, it’s a tedious process. Our team is feverishly working on that data, and as soon as we have it, we are going to sit down with the ORS to come to a resolution. … We are going to follow the law, whatever the law is. We are trying to be proactive and get this settled, so we can move on to future things at the college.”

However, not all Michigan community colleges are changing their stance on not including part-time student workers into MPSERS.

Representatives from Oakland Community College, the largest community college in the state, said the college will not change its policy, believing, like SMC, themselves to be in compliance with state law despite excluding part-time student workers from MPSERS.

“It is a position that we have held [to exclude part-time student workers from MPSERS] and that it is not one that we plan to change,” said Janet Roberts, Executive Director of Marketing and Community Relations at Oakland Community College.

Despite comments from SMC and Oakland Community College, the ORS has maintained that all part-time student workers must be enrolled in MPSERS, according to Caleb Buhs, director of communications for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget and also the chosen representative for the ORS.

Currently, the ORS is conducting an audit of student employment for all community colleges. The audit will determine compliance with state law and appropriate steps will be taken to correct any underpayments, as required by statute, Buhs said. If a report unit fails to submit contributions or reports or both, the reporting unit must pay a late fee.  In addition, if contributions are late, interest is charged.

However, Buhs said that next steps could not be determined until the audit is completed.

Until then, representatives from SMC, LMC and Oakland Community College said they will continue on their chosen courses of action.

Several community colleges in the state of Michigan could not be reached for comment on this article.