By Donald H. Harrison
EL CAJON, California – Grossmont Community College is a study in fiscal contrasts. On the one hand, work is being completed on a new student center and administration complex, the last in a series of shiny and modern buildings and additions paid for by bonds that voters approved in 2002. The hustle and bustle of the construction crews give the impression of a growing, thriving campus.
But inside other buildings, as a result of California’s 2011 fiscal crisis, the school’s vice president for administration, Tim Flood, on Tuesday ordered everyone to hold down expenses. Administrators and department chairs are working feverishly to decide how to cut 15 percent of the class offerings next year–their best- and mid-range guess of how deeply state budget cuts will impact them. But a contingency plan, envisioning even worse cuts, also has been promulgated.
As this process goes forward, students wonder if the classes that they will need next year will be available—and if not, how they will acquire sufficient units to obtain Associate of Arts (AA) degrees or other credentials. Part-time faculty and staff members wonder if they will be retained on the payroll. And full-time faculty members wonder if they will have to teach courses that they haven’t taught in years.
Amid all the speculation, some important decisions have been made about the process for deciding which courses will go and which will stay, and which students will have higher priority than others to be readmitted or admitted as students next year.
Steve Baker, dean of Arts, Humanities, Languages and Communications, said across the board cuts of 15 percent mean that each department will decide for itself which courses to keep and which courses need to go. He added that department heads were urged to give priority to core courses—that is, those that are needed for students to graduate in their majors—and to try to keep as many part-time instructors on staff as possible. He explained that if all part-timers were cut, not only would the college lose the expertise of these instructors, but it would find itself unable to gear up quickly with new courses whenever the state’s financial situation improves.
In a time of cutting, planned growth may have to be put off or cancelled. Dylan Keeling, an interim vice president of the Associated Students of Grossmont College, wonders whether the college’s psychology department will be able to go forward with plans to grant an AA degree in psychology. He said he hopes it will, because such a degree may help Grossmont students to apply for internship jobs and to show their “passion for learning.”
Meanwhile, Wendy Stewart, dean of counseling and enrollment services, said priority for student registration at Grossmont next fall will be based on the number of college units a student already has completed. Thus if someone is shy just six units of the typical 60 needed to graduate, he or she will have an earlier registration date than someone who has completed fewer units. The earlier the registration date, the more classes there are to choose from. Those students who have later registration dates may find the classes that they want are already at capacity.
Registration-date preferences also are given to veterans and to students with disabilities, Stewart noted.
Asked if this meant that students who are graduating high school this semester will be shut out of the process, Stewart said it is anticipated there will be far fewer entering freshmen than in previous years. However, she said, there will be a pilot program to help motivated high school students get earlier registration than some of their peers. Students who get in their applications early, take assessment examinations in English and in mathematics, and meet with the college’s counseling staff, will be eligible to attend an orientation session at Grossmont in May or June. As they will have completed the preliminaries, they will also be assigned an earlier registration date than other high school students. Registration will begin in July for the Fall semester, she added.
Evan Wirig, a professor of mass communications, said what’s most unfortunate is that high schools in Eastern San Diego County—the area served by Grossmont College—are expected to have, in the aggregate, one of the largest graduating classes in its history.
He added that the difficulty these students will have enrolling ”may weed out the non-committed—the ones who were going to college because ‘mommy told me I have to go.’”
Announcement of the process may quell some of the inevitable rumors that have circulated on campus. Some faculty members feared that whole departments or programs might be eliminated. They won’t be. Others were afraid that all part-timers would see their jobs end. That won’t happen either.
What is true at Grossmont is not necessarily true at other community college campuses up and down the state. Each community college district was given the authority to decide for itself how to reach the 15 percent mandate. Unlike Grossmont, others could decide to lop off whole departments. According to Dean Baker, some colleges in Northern California have even decided to lay off tenured faculty.
Not only will students be confronted with fewer class offerings, they will have to pay more per unit for any class that they do find—up from $26 per unit to $36 per unit. With 12 units being considered a full load, that will mean an additional $120 burden on students.
Students receiving federal grants will have additional concerns. Suppose they can’t get into sufficient number of classes to remain qualified for the grant? One student told me that he would have to drop out of college and get a job – presuming there was a job to be found. He and his wife have a toddler, but can’t afford day care, he pointed out. As a student, he can juggle his schedule to be with the child while his wife works, he said. However, there is no guarantee he’ll be able to do that if he goes to work. Not having a college degree, he has little hope of obtaining a job that pays enough to make day care affordable. Furthermore, he will have to start paying back his student loans.
Another student who entered college only this semester says she wouldn’t be able to afford school without financial assistance. But she will have only six units by next semester, so will the classes be all filled up by the time she has to register. And will six units still be enough to qualify for a grant next semester? Or will she have to try for more?
Complicating all this is the fact that such four-year public universities as SDSU and UCSD also are feeling the state’s budget cuts, and therefore will have to reduce the number of students they admit. These student are likely to apply for admission to Grossmont. What priority should Grossmont give to students who in better financial times would be shoo-ins for SDSU or UCSD. Dean Stewart says that is another consideration with which the school must wrestle.
The Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District also governs Cuyamaca College, which is similarly cutting 15 percent of its classes. Students are allowed to fill out their schedules by enrolling in open classes at either campus. This may provide students more options, but also may create more competitions. Overall, for both campuses, 780 class sections will be cut in an effort to offset an $8.1 million reduction in funds paid to the college by the state. That translates into nearly 5,000 students being turned away by the district.
Cindy L. Miles, chancellor of the district, said, “We’ve had to make some agonizing decisions as wwe try to provide the best education to as many as possible with sharply limited resources.”
And, the possibility of even more cuts looms on the horizon. Under what is being called “budget Armageddon,” the district could lose $12.9 million in state money if the Legislature fails to resolve a budget deficit standing at $12.5 billion—even after the cuts.
In such an instance, said Miles “We would have to cut 1,000 classes (district wide), which would bring us down to 60 percent of the courses offered just two years ago. We’d have to freeze programs and cut more part-time employees. Worst of all, we’d have to destroy the educational hopes of more than 8,000 students. We need all the help we can find to advocate with us to avoid this devastation. Our students are depending on us.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com