You can also read the article in the San Jose Mercury News
Enrollment at California’s 116 community
colleges has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of 2.1 million to 1.8 million, a
decline of over 14%. It is critical that enrollment increases in the nation’s
largest higher education system. Community colleges provide zero to low-cost
quality education that gives students from struggling to middle-income families
the skills needed to make a decent and meaningful living. If enrollment continues
to decline, more Californians will miss out on the American promise than ever
before.
How to increase enrollment at community
colleges? As a math professor at San Jose City College (SJCC), I have three
ideas based on my experience with students.
First, widen the scope of Community College’s
High School Dual or Concurrent Enrollment.
In the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of
teaching math at SJCC’s Milpitas extension, a collaboration between the
Milpitas Unified School District and SJCC. To see students from 9th, 10th, 11th
and 12th grades earning college credits while attending high school to get a
head start in their college careers was inspiring. We had animated discussions
about applying quadratic equations to describe the arc of a baseball, exponential
functions to describe the growth of viruses and probability to quantify
uncertainty.
As expected, some dual-enrollment students
attend SJCC after graduating from high school each year. While many community
colleges have similar collaborations with their local high schools, Kern County
Community College District spanning the San Joaquin Valley, eastern Sierra and
Mojave Desert being one of the largest, there remains room for growth. SJCC,
for instance, can collaborate with more local schools through an effective
outreach program to ensure a steady stream of new students.
Second, improve the quality of college
websites.
This seems obvious but is often overlooked.
Online users, particularly prospective or current students, spend on average
three minutes and visit 2-3 pages per session during which they either find
what they are looking for or they leave. Many community college websites are
clunky and confusing. Finding information often turns into a wild-goose chase.
Students complain, and I verified it myself, that it is easier to retrieve
information from the SJCC website through Google than through the website
itself. Even the basic task of enrolling for a class can be a challenge.
Effective websites have no clutter and have
elements that spark digital joy, such as easy navigation, mobile friendliness,
fewer clicks for information and accessibility for all. Build coherent
websites, and they will come.
Third, California’s community colleges must
become equal partners to the University of California (UC) and California State
University (CSU) systems. With a population of just over 39 million and an
estimated GDP of about $4 trillion, California is poised to overtake Germany as
the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind only the United States, China
and Japan.
California’s economy has a strong positive
correlation with the quality of education it offers its residents. While the
eight-campus UC and 23-campus CSU systems have a combined student population of
about 750,000 from relatively well-to-do families, our 116 community colleges
educate more than double that many students.
California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher
Education that vastly privileges UCs and CSUs over community colleges is
obsolete. Technology has transformed teaching and learning and the dynamics
between research and career. To paraphrase Dorothy, “Toto, I have a feeling we
are not in the ‘60s anymore.”
California’s community colleges do the heavy
lifting of educating most of its students beyond high schools, especially those
from disadvantaged families. By offering baccalaureate degrees without any constraints
from UCs and CSUs, for example, community colleges can attract more students,
one of the ways to ensure that the Golden State will continue to flourish for
decades to come.
