Skyline students have always asked the question, “Where am I going to go after here?” For most students there is more than one answer to this question. But if your plan is to move onto a Bachelor’s degree than you’ve probably contemplated schools like San Jose State, San Francisco State, University of California Berkeley, University of California Davis, or University of California Santa Cruz.
With so many excellent schools right around the corner we’ve always had a wide selection but now the question has changed from “What school do I want?” to “What school will actually be taking new students?” “We will adjust the size of the university to fit the budget the state provides us,” Jon Whitmore President of San Jose State said during a town hall meeting. “For now, that means shrinking the student body to fit the number of courses and services we can afford to offer.”
Many students that were planning to transfer this fall semester found themselves unable to because of the California budget crisis.
A Skyline student I spoke with that wanted to transfer to SJSU for the electrical engineering program was going so far as to consider changing his major because he was going to have to go to East Bay instead, which only offers a limited choice in engineering.
It was a similar case for a student attending De Anza College in San Jose. She wanted to transfer to SFSU, but would have to go to SJSU instead. Fortunately for her they did have her major.
California State Universities seem to be suffering the most from the budget crisis. Rumors abound of lectures being removed from the curriculum, teachers being offered specialized retirement plans (as temptations to leave), upper division classes being cut, and placing holds on all transfers.
I spoke with Libby Wilke, a San Francisco state student that has had her graduation delayed because of the limited amount of classes there are now, compared to when she began attending SFSU in 2005.
She told me that most of her classes are over crowded and if you don’t arrive early you won’t have a seat. “You can’t add a minor,” Wilke said.
Another problem that Libby has had with SFSU is that she can’t get in to see her counselor because the office seems short-staffed and overwhelmed by the onslaught of students.
“The teachers are in the same situation as us,” Wilke said sympathetically. “It seems like the school could do more.”
The UC systems however seem to be thriving. But with the prices increasing by 30% many students now believe that UC schools are out of their reach.
Of the websites I researched there was not one mention of students not being accepted for any reason, instead they were welcoming their new batch of undergraduates. University of California Santa Cruz had nearly a hundred more students than they did at this time last year.
But with classes being so limited at state universities, soon students will have to go to UC’s to fulfill their requirements.
Where does all this leave us? The number of students enrolling is increasing in community colleges, CSU’s and UC’s are increasing their prices to the point that even with financial aid you’ll still be up to your eyeballs in debt.
Should we abandon the dream of acquiring a higher education? In my opinion, no; there’s too much we still need to accomplish. After all it’s our generation that has been left with the tedious tasks of saving the earth and curing cancer.
