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NY Times, January 24, 2010 Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI At 2:29 p.m. on Jan. 12, Juan Macias, 19, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, sat in a cafe near the engineering firm where he works part time as an office assistant, staring at a laptop computer screen. In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. “This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun. Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses — then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period. “You’re trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education,” said Mr. Macias, a business major. “It really makes me angry.” His classes — the ones that had an opening — begin on Monday. Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias’s experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical. Neither of Mr. Macias’s parents went to college; his father is a railroad conductor. One of his five siblings dropped out of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo to go to community college because of financial constraints. Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a trade association representing colleges and universities, confirmed that higher education in California has become akin to navigating an obstacle course. “There are an awful lot of students in California who are having similar problems,” he said. “This is a potential tragedy for individual students.” In 1960, he added, the state created “the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the California legislature abandoned the gold standard.” Because of state budget cuts to higher education, San Francisco State is now offering 3,173 course sections, 12 percent fewer than two years ago. From the university administration’s point of view, that is not as bad as it might have been: over $1.5 million in federal stimulus money prevented more draconian cuts. Among other things, oversubscribed classrooms can force a student like Mr. Macias, who must be enrolled full time to keep financial aid, to take courses that might have little to do with his progress toward graduation. This semester, he is signed up for a biology class, but was unable to get into the companion laboratory class. His other courses are a workshop on the “history, aesthetics, mechanics and politics of rap music and hip-hop culture,” a class built around the campus radio station, KSFS, and a class called “The Origins of Rock,” which is supposed to be for upperclassmen. He is on the waiting list for a humanities class called Style and Expressive Forms and a physics laboratory class, which he hopes will help him get into the physics lecture class. They are meant to be taken together. But taking any class you can get into just to stay enrolled is no recipe for excelling academically. Last semester his grades suffered. “I’m taking these classes that I don’t care about, getting bad grades in these classes,” Mr. Macias said. “That’s affecting my G.P.A., at the same time that I’m fighting so that I can have grades. It’s really contradictory.” And it is not just classes that he has to deal with this semester. He must also deal with the legal system. He faces misdemeanor trespassing charges as a result of joining last semester’s protests of the budget cuts. Still, things could be worse. If he were a year younger, he would not be able to take classes at San Francisco State. This spring, cutbacks have largely ended the opportunity for community college students to move into the state university system, which enrolls 433,000 students. Mr. Macias transferred a year ago from Allan Hancock College, a community college in Santa Maria. Also, in response to budget cuts, San Francisco State plans to reduce enrollment more than 10 percent for the 2010-11 academic year. “These students are being told the doors to the university are closing,” said Kenneth Monteiro, dean of the university’s College of Ethnic Studies, where even the student resource center has been shuttered for lack of funds. This academic year, the university lost $38 million in state support. Student fees are 32 percent higher. Hundreds of lecturers lost their jobs; faculty and staff salaries were cut by 10 percent. Furlough days made the university’s schedule a chaotic patchwork of canceled lectures and shortened office hours. The cutbacks enraged students. On Dec. 9, Mr. Macias was among the student activists who occupied the campus’s Business Building for 24 hours, canceling the classes held inside, including one he was taking. With a red sweater partially obscuring his face, he took to the roof with 11 other protesters, wielding a megaphone and leading chants. When police broke up the occupation early the next morning, Mr. Macias, who had never participated in a protest before he went to San Francisco State, was arrested. On Jan. 26 he will go to court. The chaos of trying to get into classes last fall spurred Mr. Macias. After budget cuts forced class cancellations, he had to take a week off work to attend 20 classes, as he tried to scrounge up enough units to keep his full-time status and maintain his financial aid. In an oceanography class, the professor drew names at random to pick among the students trying to join the already-full class. Mr. Macias’s name did not come up. His final course load included several that he took to ensure a full schedule, such as the Music of John Coltrane. Mr. Macias also felt the cuts in the classroom. In the fall, Don Menn, a lecturer in the journalism department since 1999, had taken pity on many students who, like Mr. Macias, were seeking to join his introductory course, Journalism and Mass Media. He let them all in, teaching 190 in a lecture hall that seats 148. Some sat on the floor. But with no budget for a teaching assistant to help with grading, Mr. Menn had to slash the syllabus, canceling the midterm exam and the 10-page research paper. While in the past he had frequently given essay tests, this year all quizzes and the final were multiple choice. “This is supposed to be a critical-thinking type class,” Mr. Menn said, “and here it was rote learning.” His students noticed the difference. “The classes are being dumbed down a lot,” Mr. Macias said. Next year, students like Mr. Macias may face a further increase in fees. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2010-11 includes a 10 percent fee increase for students at the California State University’s 23 campuses. He also proposed restoring $305 million to the state university system. Mr. Macias’s education has already suffered. “Just worrying about having enough units to stay in school made me lose focus on my schoolwork,” he said. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
