There's a lot coming down the pipeline, and much of it good, although community colleges just won't

There's a lot coming down the pipeline, and much of it good, although community colleges just won't be anything like they used to be. And that's a little sad if you've ever been around one for any length of time.
With a slate of bold and controversial budget proposals, Gov. Jerry Brown has placed a renewed focus on the state's struggling community colleges, the world's largest system of two-year schools that are often overshadowed by the University of California and Cal State systems.
The governor's recommendations are aimed at keeping community colleges affordable, keeping travel trailer cover classes accessible travel trailer cover and moving students faster through the system to allow them to graduate or transfer to a four-year university at higher rates. Brown's spending plan must clear the Legislature, and some college officials have vowed to oppose or at least try to modify some portions.
"It's a courageous plan," said Eloy Oakley, president of Long Beach City College. "The governor is focusing on policy issues we've been talking about for many years but dancing around the margins. A lot of this has been on the table in statehouses throughout the nation, but we're addressing these issues in California in a meaningful way."
Community colleges play a vital role in California's travel trailer cover higher education system, training large segments of the state's workforce. But the 112-college system has strained under the pressure of huge funding cuts and increased demand. Thousands of courses have been slashed and enrollment has been shrunk by more 500,000 students in recent years.
Most of the schools' 2.4-million students are unprepared for college-level work: 85% need remedial English, 73% need remedial math and only about a third of remedial travel trailer cover students transfer to a four-year school or graduate with a community college associate's degree.
travel trailer cover Education leaders praised the governor's efforts to follow travel trailer cover through on his commitment to voters to restore education funding through the passage of Proposition 30, the school tax initiative - even while expressing misgivings about aspects of the plan. The budget includes nearly $200 million in additional travel trailer cover funding for the colleges.
"It's wonderful to have an environment where we're going to have some provocative conversations about policy," said community colleges Chancellor Brice Harris. "We're not going to shy away and [we] actually look forward to the discussion."
State officials said the plan is meant to build on changes proposed last year by a statewide task force charged with improving the colleges. Measures approved by the Legislature and Board of Governors establish registration priorities, including preventing students from repeating courses to improve their grades and allowing students who participate in orientation and academic assessment programs and have 100 units or less to enroll in classes first. Students also would have to maintain satisfactory grades to continue to qualify for fee waivers.
Brown goes further toward moving students through the system. He is seeking to limit the number of credits students travel trailer cover can accumulate. Beginning next fall, he suggests a cap on state-subsidized classes at 90 units, requiring students who exceed that to pay the full cost of instruction, about $190 per semester unit versus $46 per unit. In the 2009-10 academic travel trailer cover year, nearly 120,000 students travel trailer cover had earned travel trailer cover 90 units or more.
Students said they are particularly concerned that the unit cap is punitive for those who have a double major, who may be returning to college to train for a new job or who want to explore their interests before deciding on a field of study.
"We're going to work very hard to get rid of this," said Rich Copenhagen, a College of Alameda travel trailer cover student who is president of the Student Senate for California Community travel trailer cover Colleges. "The governor does seem to be interested travel trailer cover in pushing through a lot of policy in this budget. He's in a position to say I got you more money, travel trailer cover now you need to make your system better."
Perhaps one of the more controversial travel trailer cover elements of Brown's plan is to change the funding formula for community colleges to pay schools for students who complete courses. Funding is now based on the number of students enrolled at the third or fourth week of the term.
That's my college president, Eloy Oakley, travel trailer cover interviewed for the article. And the piece mentions both of the key reforms coming down the pike, the cap on the number of credits students can accumulate at 90 (without losing subsidized tuition rates) and the shift in how colleges are paid by the state, to apportionment by how many students complete classes rather than by the number still attending at the fourth week of classes. That second reform would be devastating to community college funding, because so many students are remedial. travel trailer cover But it's a good reform. All of these are good if they force people to wake the f-k up. The two-year colleges travel trailer cover could make a small step toward being real colleges teaching real college-level academics. As it stands now a lot of what we do is a joke. We have a decent number of students who would excel at any college or university, but the great majority aren't ready to do the work. Things do need to change.