Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but students enroll into our colleges to engage in courses, which is why within the California Community Colleges system there is something called the 50% Law. According to the California Community Colleges Chancellor's website, the 50% Law “requires each district to spend at least half of its current expense of education each fiscal year for salaries and benefits of classroom instructors.” The purpose of this law is to maintain small class sizes and curb administrative expansion, yet despite its implementation, recent years have witnessed administrative growth, as evidenced by my analysis of the Chancellor’s Office Staffing Reports.

Table 1: Number of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Community College Administrators and Faculty, 2010-2022

If you’re like me and enjoy spending winter break analyzing data from the state Chancellor’s office, then you might be interested in the effects of AB 705 on completion levels in math and English. 

AB 705 was legislation that prohibited, except under very narrow circumstances, colleges from requiring students to enroll in remedial math and English. The logic was that if not enough students were completing transfer-level math and English classes within a one-year timeframe because they were taking remedial classes, then if we eliminate remedial classes they will finish  faster, correct? The main data source is their Management Information Systems Data Mart. I was interested in looking at enrollment trends over the last several years, and, not surprisingly, we see a downward trend in enrollment. Below are the enrollment totals statewide and in General Math (TOP Code 170100) and English (TOP Code 150100)

California's AB 1705 (2022) legislation and the corresponding Community College Chancellor’s Office guidance mandated that community colleges directly place students into transfer-level math and English courses rather than requiring stand-alone pre-transfer courses. The goal was to increase the number of students completing transfer-level requirements. A recent FACCC survey seeking qualitative data from students provides insight into how this policy change has impacted students taking math and English courses for the first time in community college.

First, approximately one-third of survey respondents completed their first transfer-level math course with an A, B, or C grade. Over half completed their first English course successfully. Direct placement allowed these students to bypass pre-transfer courses and make progress towards their degree. We celebrate these students and want to build on their successes.

In recent years, there has been much talk about the California community colleges offering baccalaureate degrees. Amidst the buzz, little attention has been brought to the fact that certain private four-year universities are now offering associate degrees. Currently, two such programs are operating in the United States: Arrupe College, associated with Loyola University of Chicago, and Dougherty Family College, associated with University of St. Thomas. Come To Believe Network, an organization based in New York, is driving the development of  these programs in partnership with four-year universities. Their goal is to offer associate degrees at ten more four-year universities within the next five years.  This year, they provided grants to University of San Diego, University of the Pacific, Canisius University, Holy Cross College, University of Portland, and Xavier University to establish affiliated two-year colleges.

With a password-protected Board of Directors webpage and limited information about their origin, not much is clear about Come To Believe Network – other than the fact that they firmly believe that the community colleges are unable to accomplish their mission to serve students who can benefit from associate degrees. Their website is rife with damning statistics about community colleges, spotlighting their low transfer rates in comparison to the outcomes of students who have completed associate degrees at the private colleges they funded. The message is wrapped in a bow of equity, proclaiming that the privatization of associate degrees and community college educations are the key to inclusive, accessible, and successful two-year programs.

For the last decade, open education resources (OER), or zero-cost textbooks, have been the solution to bringing down costs for students and creating an equitable education. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s office asserts, “Open educational resources give students more flexibility in learning, and research shows most students perform as well or better using open educational resource course materials compared with students using traditional textbooks.”

The California Virtual Campus – Online Education Initiative (CVC-OEI) launched the Canvas Commons as an easy way to share OER and Canvas content for faculty across the state. When a pandemic took the entire California Community Colleges system online, advocates saw it as a chance for OER to take flight and bring equity to the student population: “A Majority of faculty now report some awareness of OER” (Seaman & Seaman , 2021)  Yet, that was not the case according to “Awareness of Open Educational Resources Grows, but Adoption Doesn't.”

In 1856, San Francisco’s leaders had the foresight to offer trade skills, clerical training, night high school, and teach "English for Immigrants". They brought together a diverse group, formed a community, and gave everyone a chance. 

Over 100 years later, Clark Kerr wrote the Master Plan for Higher Education. He abolished “junior” colleges and created “community colleges.” He recognized the educational needs for adults go way beyond the first two years of a university education.

A Blog Addendum to “En Mask” (FACCCTS: Fall 2020)

This blog addendum to “En Mask,” an article that appeared in the fall 2020 edition of FACCCTS, contributes to, and reconfigures, previous studies on the H1N1 influenza crisis in California by focusing on the role that gauze masks played in student print as well as material cultures, campus governance, and educational ideas. This is the second installment in the two-part blog addendum.

            Despite an ebbing of H1N1 influenza in Palo Alto, masks and ailments proliferated at the University of California in fall 1918. On October 24, the Daily Cal editorial staff advertised “GAUZE PROTECTORS ON SALE” for five cents apiece. By the next issue, the public university’s advertised sale of masks had progressed with temporal precision: “soiled masks may be exchanged for sterile ones at California Hall between 8 o’clock and 9:15 in the morning and 4 and 5:15 o’clock in the afternoon.” In female boarding houses, the daily rate of influenza cases purportedly declined by almost half. Reporters and advertisers alike were confident that “this shows that influenza is on the decline, and by wearing masks a further decrease in new cases is expected.” Daily Cal editors adhered to John Dewey’s warnings of, on the one hand, “paternal policy,” and on the other, “unbridled personal liberty.” In a political economy of progressive “liberalism,” editors situated columns on the public University mask exchange side-by-side with advertisements for masks sold by Brasch’s on Shattuck, for ten cents apiece. Masks, as material culture of university governance, facilitated epidemiological “prevention, not punishment.”

A Blog Addendum to “En Mask” (FACCCTS: Fall 2020)

            In the fall of 1918, Columbia University Professor John Dewey delivered the Mills Foundation Lectures in Philosophy at the University of California. Dewey had delivered the West Memorial Lectures at the Leland Stanford University prior to traveling to the more tuition-friendly Berkeley campus. Less than a year before both lecture series, the California State Assembly passed the Ballard Junior College Act, which authorized trade studies—but not separate community colleges—at the University of California. Dewey subsequently scheduled dual lectures for new University Extension students in San Francisco and Oakland, as well as a lecture on “Philosophy and Democracy” for the University Philosophical Union. He had recently become entangled in an extramarital relationship with Polish-Jewish novelist Anzia Yezierska, which coincided with his requests for federal intervention in Polish-American politics—all in order to advance the social democratic platform of the Polish Committee of National Defense.