<p>Here is my issue given yesterday's headlines concerning the California budget impasse and its probable impact on funding of Cali community colleges:</p>
<p>My son has two acceptances to 4-year uni's; one to a CSU and one OOS. He has made it evident over the last couple weeks, though, that he is likely going to opt for the CC route to improve his chances for "better" schools as a CC transfer ("and save you some money", his words). Commendable, but I know also somewhat disingenuous. His close cadre of friends are all at this point going to CC (not the most motivated bunch). One of his friends is going to CC because "he forgot to take the SAT", and another because he'd rather surf for now. </p>
<p>I have been leaving this as his decision, but my fear given the assumed future state of the CC's is that course offerings will be so limited that getting anything close to a full load of classes will be problematic and the most tenacious will be the victors in getting off the wait lists. The CC to 4-year uni game has changed. I see a lot of down time outside of few classes, and not much in the way of jobs to fill that time (our city just cancelled its Summer Youth Job Fair for the first time in 16 years due to lack of employers).</p>
<p>My hope is that I can review with him the latest crap rolling down from Sacramento, and have him see that CC may not be the best long-term option under these circumstances. I don't want to tell him he must pick one of the two and get on with it, but this CC situation has me very very concerned.</p>
<p>What does your son want to study? Which CSU was he accepted by?</p>
<p>From the kids that I know in this area (south Bay) and from reading anecdotes in the paper of the past couple of years, the CC experience can be a mixed bag. It’s very difficult to get the courses you want, students crash courses on the first day with hopes of being let in (some profs allow them to stay, others kick them out), there are many unemployed or underemployed adults who are going back to college, thus straining the resources of the colleges, and many adjunct professors are not being retained. On the other hand, for some kids it’s been a relatively good experience with good profs and high-quality instruction. The kids I know who are doing well are the less driven ones - they’re happy to take soft/easy courses and don’t really have a goal of getting an AA in 2 years then transferring to a good CSU/UC. I don’t mean that in a critical way, just an observation. </p>
<p>As another data point, a cousin of mine left SJSU to attend De Anza because he couldn’t get the courses he needed at SJSU. He’s doing slightly better getting courses at De Anza, but it will probably take him at least 3 years to get through the lower-level courses he needs in order to go back to SJSU.</p>
<p>I think if your son has a good CSU option (Cal Poly, Chico, Sonoma, for example) then he should take that over a CC.</p>
<p>The CSUs are planning on enrolling 10,000 fewer students next year, so they’re certainly not exempt from the pain.</p>
<p>Choosing the “CC” route with the aim of transferring rather than moving on and accepting the CSU as the college of choice for the next 4 years is unwise academically. CCs have very low graduation rates. Success in the CC setting requires a very a high level of motivation and focus, and that is all the more difficult to do because of pending budget cuts. The CSU are much less likely to be affected by pending budget cuts because they have a much better track record in succeeding in their mission than CCs.</p>
<p>Even if transfer is the plan, doing so from the CSU setting is much more likely to lead to success than from the CC setting.</p>
<p>But really starting college with “transfer” as the plan is for most students a recipe for failure.</p>
<p>One of my friends who is retraining told me that he couldn’t get the classes he needed at the local CC and has had to take the class online from another university. </p>
<p>If the budget crises abate and the economy improves, we could see an expansion in the classes offered at the CCs. But that won’t happen within the next 6 months.</p>
<p>From the article:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sounds like if you take the CC track, you could end up spending a lot more than 2 years before you transfer. If true, I’d take the 4 year college acceptance in the hand, rather than a UC in the bush.</p>
<p>not sure about northern cal, but if you live in southern cal, try to avoid the ccc route if at all possible. u are correct, the game has changed due to the state budget–and community college campuses are PACKED with people! also, if u follow news out of UC at all, there is a trend toward making ‘guaranteed’ transfers much more difficult for ccc students. this trend was pretty foreseeable (again, due to budget constraints). GPA minimums (for transfer) have already gone up on a couple of campuses and i expect others to follow suit. </p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. He was accepted to Sac State for civil engineering. In reality he doesn’t know what he wants to do, but he is inclined to the sciences as opposed to humanities.</p>
<p>I hear what you are saying about the experiences of friends at CC’s, but I think we are headed for a sea change given this state budget. Also I realize that CSU’s are also enrolling fewer, but they are able so scale their admittances to their resources somewhat. CC’s by law must admit anybody with a HS diploma that applies. And more and more are applying because they have no where else to go: shut out of the state schools due to enrollment cuts, few jobs to be had, laid off from a job, name your poison.</p>
<p>An admittance to Sac State may not be a golden ticket, but it is a ticket. Further, he must cash it now, or wait until he reaches 60 units completed which can take who knows how long in this economy. I feel sorry for anybody in this situation, but I want to explain to him that he has a viable option now and press him to take it.</p>
<p>I teach at a community college. because the governor was unable to get the tax extensions on the ballot, we are probably facing the worst-case scenario: $800 million slashed from our budget. At my college, that means $8 million in cuts. I heard that 400,000 students may be turned away. </p>
<p>If my kid had an acceptance at a four-year university, that is where I would send him/her. New students are going to have a devil of a time getting classes.</p>
<p>Utah doesn’t have CA budget problems. H has had some nieces go to SUU. Cedar City is near some gorgeous scenery, but it is the biggest town in the middle of nowhere. If it had been U of U, I might feel differently.</p>
<p>I would choose Sac State. Although I’ve always heard that the system is set up so that it is easier to transfer from a CC to a UC, the kid of a friend put in transfer papers in his freshman year at Cal Poly SLO engineering to transfer to UC Davis starting his sophomore year–and was accepted! He decided not to go–but I was surprised at the acceptance…</p>
<p>Not sure why this would be. The Adcoms at four year Unis, know that their juco transfer applicants have to go somewhere bcos they can’t stay where they are. OTOH, someone already at a four-year college can graduate with a BS/BA just by staying put. </p>
<p>At this point, I’m not buying the doom and gloom put out by those that have a vested interest in education and the politicians. If your son really does want to ‘transfer up’, consider a juco with a TAG, thereby guaranteeing him a transfer slot. If he has any remediation requirements (English/math), knock it out over the summer.</p>
<p>If he does go the juco route, apply for courses EARLY, as soon as registration opens. Too many kids wait until the last minute and are then closed out of courses bcos classes are capped by classroom size.</p>
<p>A description of the TAG program at Davis is included below:</p>
<p>blue: have u been on a community college campus lately???</p>
<p>i don’t necessarily buy the huffing and puffing either, but that doesn’t change the fact that TAG agreements are changing, and space on ccc campuses is very very tight (with new students having the LOWEST registration priority!). this is especially the case in densely populated southern california.</p>
<p>yeah, my wife takes courses at the local juco. I take golf every summer. Great deal (for me). Kinda stupid for the State, however.</p>
<p>Sure changes maybe in the offing for TAG, but I would be extremely surprised if the State would do it retro – even our politicians ain’t that dumb. Instead, they would apply changes to the future Class of xx.</p>
<p>Given that the budget cuts are real, why would the Cal States be spared, or be any better off than the jucos? </p>
<p>Yes, the SoCal schools are packed…while Chico/Humboldt is a virtual LAC, with really small class sizes. All due to demographics and growth in the Southland. But the OP lives up north, I’m assuming. UC Davis is a great school.</p>
<p>i must agree that davis is an excellent school (my son is a freshman there)!!</p>
<p>okay, i see that this person’s up north. i really have no clue about the community colleges up there. maybe they could make it work and get the TAG stuff done in a reasonable amount of time. and yes, the changes will most likely be applied to future classes. but my point was that if a kid is entering a ccc in fall 2011…and it’s extremely crowded so they have a hard time getting the gen ed courses…they may find out in a year or so that it’s harder for them to transfer than they thought. a LOT can happen in a year.</p>
<p>Sorry, I actually stepped away from CC for a while. We are in SoCal, Orange County actually. The CCC son would likely be attending is Orange Coast College.</p>
<p>This situation has caused me to make some abrupt changes concerning our younger son who is grudating from high school this year. He had applied to only one college, CSU Sacramento, where my older son is a sophomore majoring in Geology. Although S2 only had a GPA of 3.05 at the end of junior year I thought he would be admitted without any problems since he was applying to a very unimpacted major, Physics, and had SAT scores of CR 660 and Math 720. The problem was he has ADHD and refuses to take his medication and my wife and I made the mistake of letting him fill out the application form himself and send it to Sac State. Unfortunately, he completely botched the application, giving Sac State the impression he was a non-resident, even though he spent all of his high school years in the same high school in Sacramento county and that he had failed to complete the various high school English and History courses required by Sac State. He was rejected on the basis that he was a non-resident with an eligibily index of only 2980 based on his self-reported courses and grades when a minimum of 3,502 is required for non-residents to be eligible for admission. We were given until April 15 to file an appeal. At first he did not want to appeal because he was embarressed by all the errors he had made on the application and we decided it might be best after all for him to go to community college for two years, maybe improve his study habits and possibly get accepted as a transfer to a UC.</p>
<p>When I saw the L.A. Times story that the Los Rios Community College system, which he was planning on attending was going to have to eliminate over 1,000 courses and turn away 18,000 students this Fall I concluded we had to change our plans. Going to a CCC starting this summer will be an academic dead end where students could easily spend five years getting the courses they need to transfer to a UC with some semesters in which he would not be able to get into any classes at all. Most students will just give up and drop out in frustration which I fear my son could do. So while we realize that Sac State is not UC Berkeley, I think under these new circumstances it is better to try to get admitted to a four year university where he can at least earn his BS in Physics without having to transfer rather than be trapped for years in the imploding CCC system and eventually give up without ever getting a Bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>So we are going to appeal and I think our case is a pretty strong one. We are gathering the documentation and transcripts to show that S2 is a California resident, spent all four years at and is graduating from a Sacramento County high school, did complete his required CSU high school courses and that his eligibility index score is actually 3820, not 2980, when only a 2900 is required for California residents. It will be a hectic two weeks and I would have liked to have him have had the opportunity to go to a UC where I think he could have succeeded and have better prospects for graduate school than he will coming out of a CSU but I think sending a child into the CCC system now is just taking too much of a risk that they will never end up with a Bachelor’s degree and, of course, not have even the possibility of going to graduate school let alone finding decent employment.</p>
<p>I remember reading your situation a couple weeks ago and I am one who implored that your son should appeal. I’m glad he is going to take another crack at it.</p>
<p>My concern mirrors yours in that I’m concerned that if the CCC’s deteriorate anymore more from where they are now my son as well would fall through the cracks. He needs to be engaged or his habits and choices tend to wander into undesirable territory. My hope is that he will take our concerns to heart and make the choice that has what I believe to be the best long-term chance at success.</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice, I really appreciate it. My son is also one I fear who would just aimlessly bounce around the pointless institution that the CCC system seems to be on the road to. I think my son has also realized that if he is going to turn his academics around he has to try to get into a four year university, even if it is a CSU, that has some structure and a clear path to a degree and finally swallowed his pride and agreed to appeal.</p>