After 15 semesters of growth, spring enrollment at California's community colleges fell by 51,000 students this year -- a drop-off that college officials largely blame on course reductions and budget cuts ordered by the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis in January.

Thomas J. Nussbaum, chancellor of the California Community Colleges, will release a report today saying there was a critical drop of nearly 40,000 first-time and returning students in spring 2003 compared with spring 2002.

Their absence, he argues, indicates California's key entry point to higher education is being squeezed shut as demand reaches an all-time high.
It is the first time the 108-campus system has seen its enrollment shrink since 1995. There were 584,278 first-year and returning students in the spring of 2002, compared with 544,810 the following spring.

The drop-off, Nussbaum asserts, is primarily the result of $161 million in midyear budget cuts that forced community colleges to reduce course offerings.

Arguing that the spring 2003 numbers demonstrate that students lost access to the two-year colleges even before higher fees kicked in this fall, Nussbaum will tell the community college Board of Governors today that diminished state spending has as much to do with declining enrollment as higher tuition costs.

"Most policy-makers think when you ramp up fees, you lose access," Nussbaum said. "But we are saying that the same thing happens when resources are constricted. We have two previous downward cycles in our history to show that we are probably headed for several years of turning many students away."

But at least one analyst warned that using Nussbaum's numbers for spring 2003 as an indicator of doom is premature.

"I don't think a downturn in one semester can tell us that we are headed for a trend," said Steve Boilard, higher education director for the independent Legislative Analyst's Office.

Community college enrollment, now nearly 1.7 million statewide, has a history of volatility, and overall, student numbers for the entire academic year actually rose slightly, by more than 1 percent between 2001-2002 and 2002-2003, Boilard said.

Factors that kept students away in the spring of 2003 probably included the anticipation of higher fees, as much as actual budget cuts, he said.

Boilard also said that the recently signed budget includes money for community colleges to expand enrollment by 1.5 percent -- a figure that Nussbaum says falls woefully short of demand.

In fact, Nussbaum says the community colleges should have enrolled 50,000 additional students last spring based on the state's population growth and historic patterns of attendance.

California's $38.2 billion budget crisis has fallen hard on the three segments of public higher education, forcing steep student fee increases at the University of California and California State University systems. Both have announced enrollment restrictions for this coming spring, with CSU set to turn away as many as 30,000 transfer students.

Likewise, community college fees rose from $11 per unit to $18 for this fall, but funding for financial aid was increased to guarantee that needy students would have their fees waived.

California high schools are turning out record numbers of graduates, prompting an enrollment boom at public colleges that educators call Tidal Wave II. As UC and CSU enrollment caps and fee increases kick in, Nussbaum worries that students who would otherwise head to the four-year institutions will opt for community colleges.

"I'm not sure how we will be able to absorb everyone who wants in," he said. "I think the implications are greatest for those students who have no other options but community colleges ... they could be squeezed out by the more adept UC and CSU students."