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A study of California’s community college system released yesterday finds that despite shocking enrollment reductions, budget cuts are making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of students to get into the courses they need to maintain progress toward their degrees.
Community college enrollment has been reduced by 17% in the past four years, but course offerings have been cut by 24%, leaving some 470,000 students on waiting lists as the fall semester gets underway. The system’s budget, which has been cut by $809 million since 2008, will be slashed another $338 million this winter if California voters reject a tax increase referendum in November.
The problems in the state’s community colleges are compounded by the fact that California has cut enrollment at four-year schools in recent years, increasing demand for CC slots:
“We have all of these students who want to take courses — high school graduates, then a whole group who had planned to go to the University of California or Cal State but can’t afford to, and with the economy, all of these people coming back to college because they need skills,” one college’s spokeswoman told the LA Times. But “we’re all being forced by the state to offer fewer courses for students.”
Student support services have been cut to the bone as well, which means that enrollment counseling is harder to come by, along with help in sorting out financial aid problems. One college has completely eliminated tutoring and student visits to four-year colleges, and ended publication of its student handbook, the report says.
1. Trust is a risk worth taking.
2. A rough beginning can be a reason for optimism.
3. The people you are in awe of are often in awe of you.
4. Sleeping on a church floor is a beautiful thing.
5. The road is long because it’s supposed to be long.
6. Sharing stories is life-altering.
7. The beloved community exists in a state of constant reinvention.
8. Where the movement is now … is thrilling.
Chilean student activists hold control of at least seven schools in the country’s capital this morning, following street protests that saw 75 arrested and three city buses burned.
The students are seeking to reverse the privatization of the country’s educational system that took place under dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Associated Press reports, rejecting government proposals to expand scholarships and lower loan rates as inadequate:
Mass demonstrations initially raised expectations for profound changes but more than a year after the first protests few students have seen any real benefits. Protesters say the system still fails families with poor quality public schools, expensive private universities, unprepared teachers and banks that make education loans at high interest rates most Chileans can ill afford…
Student leaders say real change will only come when the private sector is regulated and education is no longer a for-profit business…
“If we’re coming to this extreme, this level of anger among students, it’s because this government has been unable to have a dialogue and give us any answers,” said Gabriel Boric, the president of the University of Chile student federation.
Student leaders met on Tuesday with Santiago mayor Pablo Zalaquett, who has threatened protesters with the loss of their academic scholarships, but the talks broke down after only two hours.
“The University of California was a young, comparatively small institution when I entered there in 1885 as a freshman. … My class numbered about one hundred boys and girls, mostly boys, who came from all parts of the State and represented all sorts of people and occupations. … We found already formed at Berkeley the typical undergraduate customs, rights, and privileged vices which we had to respect ourselves and defend against the faculty, regents, and the State government.
“One evening, before I had matriculated, I was taken out by some upper classmen to teach the president a lesson. He had been the head of a private preparatory school and was trying to govern the private lives and the public morals of university “men” as he had those of his schoolboys. Fetching a long ladder, the upper classmen thrust it through a front window of Prexy’s house and, to the chant of obscene songs, swung it back and forth, up and down, round and round, till everything breakable within sounded broken and the drunken indignation outside was satisfied or tired.
“This turned out to be one of the last battles in the war for liberty against that president. He was allowed to resign soon thereafter and I noticed that not only the students but many of the faculty and regents rejoiced in his downfall and turned with us to face and fight the new president when, after a lot of politics, he was appointed and presented. We learned somehow a good deal about the considerations that governed our college government. They were not only academic. The government of a university was — like the State government and horse-racing and so many other things — not what I had been led to expect. And a college education wasn’t either, nor the student mind.”
—The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
This is really cool.
The Student Labor Action Project, a group that works with students across the US on economic justice organizing, has just completed a year-by-year history of its work. Here’s a sample, chosen pretty much at random:
2006
SLAP students at Temple University and University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia waged a campaign against security guard firm, AlliedBarton. Philly SLAP and the city’s Jobs with Justice coalition held numerous marches and protests to try and secure a living wage and benefits for security officers working on campuses and throughout the city. In Vermont, SLAP students also ran a living wage campaign for campuses workers. The National Student Labor Week of Action featured 250 actions on campuses. In addition to living wage campaigns going on throughout the nation, SLAP students also held actions against American Eagle and in solidarity with the Justice at Smithfield campaign.
In 2006, the Living Wage Action Coalition was founded to coordinate living wage campaigns taking place across the country. LWAC grew out of a living wage campaign at Georgetown University, and the students who ran that campaign hoped to create a larger network that could provide trainings, resources, and supports for struggles across the country. SLAP was a major partner with LWAC and provided its expertise to the assist the movement for a living wage.
Carlos Jimenez was hired as the fifth SLAP Coordinator.
This kind of narrative history is crucial to any movement, and student activists may be less likely to produce it than any other group. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to mention something about an organization or movement in a larger work, but had to drop it or cut it down because I couldn’t find a solid overview source and didn’t have time to build one from scratch.
My dissertation was intended to fill one such gap, but there are a ridiculous number of others, many of them huge. Here’s to filling gaps.
studentactivism.net 
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