Is This Really a Two-Year Degree
I am a student at Golden West College, one of the best academic institutions in Southern California. The collage accommodate more than 10,000 student and offers 122 different degree programs such as Associate art degree program, Education program and many more courses. The college is renowned for its achievement especially in learning-center academic programs, and a strong student governing body that performs numerous academic activities. The collage admits students with good diploma grades with at least 18 years old of age. The collage does not provide housing accommodation to students, hence request all students to look for accommodation outside the campus. In terms of gender quality and employment opportunity GWC provide equal chances to anyone seeking services from the collage irrespective of whether you are a man or woman. In terms of admission, students can apply online or get forms from the campus offices. Finally the collage has numerous outdoor services such as participations in sports, helping the society among many outdoor activities, (DeBenedictis, 2012).
California Community Colleges represent almost 25 percent of the total population of students in all the state’s community colleges. California comes second to Hawaii in offering the cheapest education system in the country. An estimated 2.6 million students are enrolled in the California community colleges every year. In their service delivery to the community, it has emerged that almost no student manages to achieve a degree in two years or less. Students spend more time than they should to do a degree and end up paying more for it. According to the Student Success Task Force, Advancing Student Success in the California Community Colleges, only 54 percent of the students manage to achieve a certificate or a degree. So, here arises a logical question - is this really a two-year degree?
A two year degree should last just that long or less. Unfortunately this is not always the case due to some challenges experienced by students. One of the main challenges is funds. Some students have to either borrow heavily to finance their education or take off one or two semesters in order to find time to do jobs here and there to finance their education. Community colleges are supposed to attract students from communities. Such communities often consist of families who earn too little income to comfortably pay for tuition fees in the colleges. A student is therefore forced to attend classes as well as work on the side in order to subsidize his/her education. Luke Latham, a biology teacher at Cypress College, California, gives an account of what happened about 11 months ago when the state introduced budget cuts to community colleges. Her college was one of the worst affected, having lost about two fifths of their overall biology sections. This resulted to students who were admitted lacking common classes, which consequently delayed their graduation since they had not done all the required classes. Students suffer even more as service got worse due to the deteriorating teacher-student ratio, since assistant professors who work on contractual basis were also affected adversely, (Cloud, 1953).
Not all impediments to achieving a two/four year degree on time can be blamed on finances, some are personal or family related. For instance, a student who wants to do an internship during an academic year has to account for the time, lost by pushing forward graduation dates. It is unfortunate that some students declare majors in the middle of college. They waste precious time moving from one course to the other because they are undecided and unsettled. This makes it impractical to attain a degree in two years. Karla Perez, a student, observes that there are cases where a student enrolled at the community colleges has children or a family to worry about, which adds onto the responsibilities in his/her life. There are also a few cases were one could be facing some other things that happen to their lives which affects the time he/she can afford to dedicate to college work. For instance, a woman who lost her husband and now has to go to school, work and bring up the kids. This woman can only take up a few classes each semester over a number of years for her to achieve a degree that should have taken her two years. In addition, some students are slow learners who need remedial classes to catch up with the rest. According to Peter Adams who is a Community College teacher at Baltimore County, most students admitted to college are not really ready for it. They require more time than the rest of the students to grasp a concept. Consequently, these students are forced to take a lot of non-credit classes in order to prepare themselves. Revone Clifford is one such student who together with others forms 50 percent of the student population and 66 percent of the black and Latino students, who have to do catch up classes, hence taking more than two years to achieve a degree. Courses in basic skills and catch up classes represent a very high cost not only to the student but also to the state. Two-fifths of all the students who enroll in basic skill courses give up. Most of those who quit are those who have repeated the same course over and over again until they no longer believe they can do it. Such students spend too much time and tuition money on these courses and eventually take away nothing out of it. Taxpayers pay a price as well. The country spends approximately $3 billion on basic skills courses each year, according to Stan Jones-Complete College America.
Some of the reasons why students fail to complete a degree inside the stipulated time are academic related. Colleges lack the efficiency to ferry students through a degree. Due to economic hardships, many students go for classes at community colleges, and this creates a situation that leads to congestion in the classes and overburdening the few teachers available. One of the proposed solutions to this problem at golden West Community College was to hike tuition fees for some courses so as to put a bottle neck to enrollment, as well as raise funds in the college. This led to protests from students leading to the abolishment of the hiked fees. It can sometimes prove to be hard if the college has too many students in a class making it difficult to complete a degree in time, (Clark, 1995).
According to Brice Harris, the chancellor of Los Rios Community College District based in Sacramento and the current chancellor of the California Community Colleges observed that nearly 15000 students are turned down in Sacramento region alone. Statewide estimates show that over 30000 students miss out due to overcrowding, which is now a common pattern in the 122 community colleges in California. Most colleges do not provide enough information to students before they choose majors. Lack of adequate counseling to students who are not prepared for college work and those who do not have clear educational goals has greatly pushed graduation dates for so many students over the years. This will help reduce the number of students who take longer than necessary to graduate. This is one of the recommendations, among others contained in the Student Success Task Force, Advancing Student Success in the California Community Colleges.
Much as most students spend far too much time and money to attain a degree, this works out to the advantage of others. People who have work, family and other commitments to take care of and cannot attend classes on a full time but need the education benefits. A student attends 2 or 3 classes each session over a number of years until he/she achieves a degree or a certificate. However long it takes them, they get to fulfill their goals in life and maybe earn promotions at work. Other students don’t have an option as a degree in two years. For example, most students in the English class at Gavilan College in Gilroy are adults, who want to learn a second language. Others are only after life enriching classes like art, music and other non-credit classes while there are those, who come for vocational skills like the case in Laney Community College in Oakland’s business marketing class.
In the quest to fulfill the needs of the society, the California Community Colleges have been hard-pressed to offer education to millions of students after high school under tight budgets which has caused dilemmas in the colleges. The rising demand for education has led to overstrained resources, limiting the number of students who are able to achieve a certificate or a degree in time while remaining cost effective. At present, it is near impossible to attain this. This lead to the formation of the Student Success Task Force, Advancing Student Success in the California Community Colleges to try and look into ways of overturning this trend. The situation in these institutions is so bad, that some people are now proposing a change in the mission and purpose of community colleges which is to serve the community by offering job skills, training, courses on languages, vocational certificates, general education before transferring to a four year degree, basic skills and much more. State legislators as well as the Student Success Task Force are recommending a change of priority so as to focus more on new students who are joining with a vision and desire to achieve a degree in two years to enable them transfer to a four year degree or get a job, (Thelin, 1980).
