Community College No Longer an Option?

December 18, 2008

For the first time, the California State University system will turn away 10,000 qualified students at its 23 campuses due to the state budget crisis, many of whom would be expected to enroll at community colleges.

“I really feel empathy for the students who are probably going to be turning to the community colleges for their transfer level course content if they can’t get into the university of their choice. The reality is, seats aren’t going to be available,” said Allen Dooley, associate dean of enrollment at Pasadena City College.

The Cal State system is planning to cut 10,000 incoming students for the 2009-2010 academic year because of the economic downturn. The California Community Colleges, which serves more than 2.7 million students in 110 community colleges in the state, will not be able to assist students due to a nearly $620 million budget cut to the community college system.

If the proposed budget cuts were to occur, community colleges would have to turn students away, cut classes and intersessions, or cap the number of students at the school, which would be detrimental to possible CSU students considering community college as a back up plan.

According to the Community Colleges’ chancellor’s office, the governor’s administrations budget proposal would include more than $330 million in mid-year cuts on top of a $290 million reduction in the recently enacted State Budget, for a total of $622.2 million in cuts to the California Community Colleges system.

“We are going to have to turn away 250,000 students and we will not be able to accommodate the 10,000 students that CSU is turning away,” said Diane Woodruff, chancellor of the California Community Colleges.

Woodruff’s estimated 250,000 students come from state’s proposed $332.2 million reduction in cuts, which would mean 64,000 full-time students would not be assisted, including nearly 100,000 students that are currently unfunded. This would be a total of 164,000 full time equivalent students that Woodruff predicted the system would not be able to serve. However, the chancellor said because many students attend the colleges part time, officials believe over 250,000 students would ultimately be affected by the cuts.

LACC

“It’s a challenging time for community colleges. CSU closes its doors, and we take on more students. It’s a challenge because we get the least amount of money, but we have more people to serve. So we’re offering limited resources to more students,” said Jamillah Moore, president of Los Angeles City College.

Moore said L.A. City College, which serves nearly 23,000 students, tries to make cutbacks based on reduced spending and a wait-and-see approach.

“We don’t want to pull back on enrollment, so for example, if a class in a certain section isn’t filling up, we’ll simply remove that class from the schedule,” she said.

“And if we’re offering two to three summer sessions, we may even cut back and offer two,” Moore added.

Pasadena City College, the third-largest single-campus community college district in the United States, with nearly

Pasadena City College

26,000 credit students, and about 5,000 non-credit students, is another one of the schools seeing the effect of a worsening financial situation, and would be unable to accept this new influx of students.

“It’s not a good situation, but we can’t accommodate all the other people…we can only accommodate what we’ve scheduled for [nearly 30,000 students]. We can’t offer more because we won’t have the money to pay for it,” said Margaret Ramey, associate dean of admissions at Pasadena City College.

Although Ramey doesn’t know the extent of the cutbacks, they’ve had to cut some classes for the spring semester because of the budget.

“We have gone over [enrollment] probably what we should have for fall 2008 and that’s probably one of the reasons we had to cut back for spring,” Ramey said. “We’re prepared to do the schedule that we planned, but we can’t do anymore than that. There are financial and space reasons. It’s going to be a juggling, first-come, first-serve type of thing.”

Ultimately, the programs with the possibility of being cut are up to the students.

“It depends what people want, what type of classes they’re looking for. Our English and Math fill up the fastest,” said Ramey.

Dooley, however, said classes haven’t been cut, proposing that Pasadena College is trying to keep the enrollment numbers steady, without growing or cutting figures.

“What PCC is doing is keeping the number of sections flat compared to spring of 2008, meaning no additional classes or sections for spring,” Dooley said.

“We are going to maintain classes at a no-growth level. That’s because we won’t have additional budget resources from the state to increase the number of courses that we offer,” he added.

Dooley predicted that Pasadena will mostly be affected due to some of its sister colleges cutting sections and reducing enrollments.

“I think Glendale [Community College], Mt.SAC [Mt. San Antonio College], and Citrus [College], [are] eliminating summer sessions, winter sessions, and in some cases, decreasing the amount of sections in their regular fall and spring semesters,” Dooley said.

Frances Collins-Moore, a high school counselor at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, said it’s only been within the past eight or nine months that they’ve been fully aware of the college cutbacks and how it would affect the high school students.

“We’re having meetings as we speak, so we can interact with PCC [for example] to find out just how the budget is affecting them. They need to tell us what approach they’re going to take with our students. We’re trying to churn out the students and make them ready for the careers they want, the colleges they want, and for the programs they want to get into. At this venue, we’re just trying to get the students ready for where they want to go,” said Collins-Moore.

Collins-Moore, however, is quick to note the inevitability of budget cuts influencing Pasadena College and other community colleges around the area.

“I could see PCC capping the number of students, or venture our students to other community colleges. I could also see them cutting classes. But I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen,” she said. “Although education is usually the hardest hit.”

In 2007, Marshall sent nearly 42 percent of its students to a 2-year college, 44 percent to a 4-year college, and about 14 percent attended a vocational school.

Collins-Moore proposed students should be prepared academically in order to face the consequences of budget cuts limiting university and community college access.

“They need to study hard and do well on entrance exams, such as the SAT and the ACT, but they also need to have a back up school that they can go to,” said Collins-Moore. “I’m telling a lot of my students, it’s highly competitive, and it’s going to get even more competitive for you. You are going to need to be prepared.”

Ramona Czernek, 17, a senior at Marshall who has applied to several Cal State universities, said the budget cuts are a topic of conversation within her circle of friends.

“A lot of my friends only applied to two Cal States universities… and now they feel because CSU was cut, their grade point averages aren’t good enough to get into Cal State.  They said they’re going to PCC [now.] That’s their option since they can’t seem to get into other universities,” said Czernek.

Czernek said if budget cuts go into effect for community colleges, her friends would seemingly have no other alternative.

“Some of my friends will try to give up because they can’t get into community college,” she said. “They’re afraid that if they don’t get in a community college, they won’t have any other options.”

CORRECTION: Glendale Community College did not cut the winter or summer sessions, according to Wendy Grove, the Public Information Coordinator at Glendale.