California fall undergraduate enrollment declines have slowed, but still ‘troubling’
Students attending community colleges and state universities will have to complete more courses than ever before: the state legislature has given universities and community colleges a 30 percent decrease in funding effective for the 2014-15 school year.
The funding cuts will force colleges and universities to increase the number of students they enroll, but a big question is whether some who may enroll this year will leave because of the funding cuts.
And when they leave, others will enter, bringing the total to more students than ever before.
More students means more resources to serve them — which could mean more resources for colleges and universities and a larger pool of graduates for state and local governments to tap for education, economic development and housing needs.
“It is still a worrisome environment,” said Dr. Terry J. Johnson, provost and vice chancellor- academic for the University of California. “This is a major challenge.”
The university will look in particular at the drop in the number of students with disabilities and at the rise, he said, of students with limited English proficiency.
UC’s budget request for the coming school year, he said, “is based on an analysis of how our programs need to change.”
One change is related to the way that the university calculates the number of students on its waiting list. UC now uses a formula that determines how many students each student group is supposed to have based on information that UC collects through a voluntary system of surveys and student surveys.
While the number of students who enrolled at community colleges and state universities with disabilities has fallen from a high of about 3,500 in 2000-01 to about 4,100 this year, the number of students with limited English proficiency in the California high school graduation rates dropped from 22.3 percent in 2002-03 to roughly 22.0 percent this year, UC noted. That represents a decrease of about 200 high school graduates from a typical California high school