State community colleges struggling to meet student needs
Santa Cruz Sentinel 3/20/07
Cabrillo College was in line with the state average with 50.3 percent of its students accomplishing these goals — compared to the 52 percent success rate across the state.
But administrators at Cabrillo, in a written response, acknowledged being at the "low end of its peer group," and said programs already are in place to help boost the numbers of students getting a degree or transferring to a university.
Craig Hayward, director of planning and research at Cabrillo, said the report was spurring investigation.
"It's like a road sign or signal pointing in a direction, and we're taking that direction and pursuing it a little further," Hayward said.
Community colleges in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties averaged several points higher in six-year success rates.
The report, the first internal audit by the community college system, studies the performance of its 110 community colleges and 2.5 million students. Fulfilling a 2004 legislative mandate, it is considered to be the most comprehensive and detailed assessment of the system's many campuses.
Overall, it found that the statewide six-year success rate hasn't budged much in the past three years, since the data was first collected.
Cabrillo slipped from 51.4 percent between 1998-99 and 2003-04, to the 50.3 percent success rate between 2000-01 and 2005-06.
Hayward said the good news for Cabrillo was that it rated higher than average in the majority of the report's performance standards, such as the numbers of students completing 30 units and success in vocational programs.
California's community college system, the largest higher educational system in the nation, has long prided itself on providing an education to everyone who wants one.
Because community colleges must accept any Californian 18 and over, they handle a large number of students who need remedial help before they can begin taking college courses. So the system faces big challenges, ranging from dramatic demographic changes to state funding cutbacks.
The report, titled "Focus on Results: Accountability Reporting for the Community Colleges," does not study all students. Rather, it measures the success stories — students who have already completed 12 units of course work and took English and math assessments.
So it paints a rosier picture than reports that looked at the entire student body, which found fewer than one-quarter of students achieving their goals.
"The community college's number is very different than ours,'' said Nancy Shurlock of Cal State Sacramento's Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy, whose recent study found that 10 percent of students who want a two-year degree and 26 percent of those hoping to transfer to a four-year university achieve their goals.
"This measure doesn't tell us whether they're doing their job with the toughest students,'' she said. "They look at students who are already successful. Plenty of students never make it to 12 units or enroll in college English or math.
"I don't want to judge whether a 50 percent success rate means that the glass is half full or half empty. Fifty percent means there is still a lot of work to do"
There were several bright spots in the report. It found that the median income of community college students who completed their degrees or vocational certificates nearly tripled — from $17,000 per year to $49,500 per year — when compared over a five-year period before and after completion.
In addition, the completion rate for students in vocational courses is high — 77.3 percent.