January 12, 2012 | By Rebekah Turnbaugh, Campaign for College Opportunity
In the summer of 2010, and faced with the loss of accreditation because of long-term over-enrollment and the failure to collect student fees, the Peralta Community College District implemented a new student fee policy that resulted in hundreds of students being dropped from the courses for which they had registered. The new policy: students must pay their student fees in full two weeks before classes start.
November 2, 2011 | By Karen Humphrey, Executive Director, California Postsecondary Education Commission
In signing the California state budget for 2011-12 on June 30 of this year, Governor Brown exercised his line item veto to remove all General Fund support for the state’s higher education coordinating agency, the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC). The agency, which is responsible for data collection, policy research, and advice to the Governor and Legislature on higher education in California, will close November 18. Although CPEC does not cease to exist totally until the statute that created it 38 years ago is repealed, it is effectively out of business.
August 11, 2011 | By Dowell Myers
Article originally featured in The Sacramento Bee.
Rapid demographic change in the United States has spawned a generational divide along racial and ethnic lines. On one side are whites over age 60; on the other, young minorities, mostly Latino. Pointing to the anti-immigrant hysteria in Arizona, many experts and advocates, both conservative and progressive, warn of dire conflict across this divide.
August 2, 2011 | By Sam Eisenstein, Los Angeles City College
Article originally featured in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
2011 marks my 50th year as an instructor at Los Angeles City College, which is not something of interest except to the perhaps 15,000 students who have passed through my classes. And maybe also their spouses, children and grandchildren. OK, maybe also to the parole officers they didn't have, the unemployment lines they didn't stand in, even possibly the homes not broken with the anguish of abandonment and/or divorce.
If I seem to be making a case for education being the linchpin to a successful life, I plead guilty.
July 26, 2011 | By Rebekah Turnbaugh, Campaign for College Opportunity
Somewhere in the pipeline between Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) and Pasadena City College (PCC), high school students were losing ground. They had taken the requisite 2 years of math in high school, but it was often done in their freshman and sophomore years so that by the time they took the assessment test for PCC, 75% did not qualify for college-level math. Furthermore, once the students started taking classes at PCC, 75% of them never moved beyond pre-algebra. Instructors in both systems suspect that the reason for this was a combination of the lapse of time between when students had last studied math and when they took the assessment test, and the accuracy of the test itself.
June 13, 2011 | By Andrea Venezia, Thad Nodine, and Kathy Reeves Bracco
In such scarce and uncertain fiscal times that we currently face, student services are often among the first areas hit by cuts—in both K-12 and postsecondary education. With 60 percent of students in community colleges nationally taking at least one basic skills course (as just one example of student need), this is the time to focus greater attention on student services, and to ensure that current practices are time and resource efficient for everyone involved.
May 11, 2011 | By: Reid Milburn, Campus & Community Relations Director, Hands Across California
At approximately 2:00 PM on April 17, 2011, in an unprecedented show of unity, tens of thousands of students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, and supporters of California Community Colleges came together across the state to hold hands. Hands Across California, a concept similar to the original Hands Across America from 25 years earlier, brought people from all walks of life together in support of student scholarships and the California Community Colleges.
Apr. 29, 2011 | By: Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Superintendent/President, Long Beach City College
The final blog in this week's series is testimony provided by Long Beach City College Superintendent and President, Eloy Ortiz Oakley to the Little Hoover Commission on Ferbuary 24, 2011.
Apr. 28, 2011 | By: David Wolf, Co-Founder & Board Member, The Campaign for College Opportunity
The Little Hoover Commission is meeting today to further discuss the state of California's Community Colleges. David Wolf will be providing the following testimony at today's meeting.
Apr. 27, 2011 | By: Bill Scroggins, President, College of the Sequoias
Today's blog is the final piece of Bill Scroggins's testimony provided to the Little Hoover Commission on February 24, 2011. Read more for his thoughts on the complex finance system of California Community Colleges.
