Local community college students face unknown future

Twenty-one-year-old Betty Morales is in her third year at Oxnard College and has been trying to transfer to Cal State, Channel Islands, since May 2009. She has enough credits to transfer and has earned her A.A. degree, but is lacking the required courses she needs for her program of interest. Her plans to transfer have been delayed an entire year because of one class, which has been full two semesters in a row.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because I’ve done all the right things, taken all the right classes, and I still don’t have what I need,” says Morales.

More and more students are finding themselves in a position similar to Morales’ since California first declared a budget crisis and began cutting spending for many social programs. With funds for education dwindling, faculty is being forced to work fewer hours due to the budget cuts. Programs are being scaled down or eliminated, and the number of course offerings is limited. Class sizes have gone up at many schools even though the price of education is higher than ever.

With fees rising substantially in the state school, community college and University of California systems, up to 30 percent at some institutions, students are paying more and getting far less for their money. They’re finding it difficult to get the classes they need to graduate on time, and many schools’ counseling departments have the added responsibility of helping students finagle a class schedule that meets their needs and of finding them suitable substitutions when the options are slim.

According to the Ventura County community college district, there is a decreasing trend in the overall success rate of students. On average, it is taking students six semesters to complete their coursework to transfer. Of the total student population at Ventura, Oxnard and Moorpark colleges, they define 30 percent as degree-seeking students who are working toward a certificate or to transfer to a four-year school. Between the 2000 and 2005 school years, this overall success rate has gone down by 5 percent, from 59 percent to 54 percent. The success rate is calculated every three years, so by the end of this school year, they will have a better idea of the substantial decrease in students’ overall success rate from 2006 to 2009.

But the district’s Center for Institutional Research says that, while the official numbers are not in yet, enrollment is down and they are predicting a larger than normal decrease in overall success rates.

Dr. Beth Hartung, professor of sociology at Cal State University, Channel Islands says the most important aspect of the issue is that the government is reneging on its promises and that each generation makes a pact with the next, an implicit agreement to provide the next generation with the right to an education. “One of the saddest things to me is to see that pact diminish,” says Dr. Hartung. But she believes the real tragedy of this budget crisis is that there is already a great university and community college system in place, and we are currently witnessing the undoing of that great system.

These difficulties are causing students to be more strategic when choosing a major and seeking out specific fields of study that are more likely to yield job prospects. Enrollment in business and nursing programs are higher, while in teaching and many traditional liberal arts programs, like English, they are way down.

Not surprisingly, many students are finding the whole school system too troublesome to navigate at all, and in an economy where jobs for recent college grads are hard to come by, some are forgoing their diplomas and opting for the more practical alternative of a steady job. Students and graduates are also stretching themselves a bit further to find internships and volunteer work, partly because there aren’t any paying jobs in their field, but also because it is becoming increasingly important to network and make connections in the community and to gain the practical job skills that universities are failing to provide.

New legislation was introduced in Congress last week that may help to hold over community colleges until serious changes to the budget can be made. The Community College Stabilization Fund will grant $700 million in emergency funding to community colleges to hire faculty and counselors and rebuild some of the programs that are suffering most. The level of funding to each state will be determined by the unemployment rate, which is around 12 percent in California, with state legislators distributing the money to the schools based on enrollment. The bill has been referred to the subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness.

Congresswoman Lois Capps said in press release this new legislation was important because, “Education has always helped open the doors of opportunity and economic success in America, and community colleges in particular have played an important role in ensuring that all Americans can access the tools to get a good paying job.”

The education system, as with so many other institutions in America, is undergoing a “paradigm shift,” as Hartung calls it, meaning that as a society, we are changing the way we think about these systems and the roles we want them to play in our lives. As we recover from this serious recession, priorities have to be renegotiated. She says, “Education is something that we have the right to, and sometimes people need to be reminded of the importance of a university degree in terms of developing a voting population and a society that is thoughtful and engaged.”