Bid for Later Class Start at Community Colleges Fails

San Diego Community College District students and faculty Wednesday beat down a proposal by school administrators to push back the start of fall classes this year from Aug. 17 to Sept. 4.

The district’s board of trustees voted unanimously to continue the present starting date.

School officials had hoped to swell the dwindling ranks of students by making it easier for parents, vacationers and people not able to get into crowded classes at San Diego State University to enroll in time for classes at the three community college campuses.

During two hours of spirited debate, faculty members and students objected to the measure, saying it would destroy the “continuity of education,” not to mention cast a pall over their Christmas vacations. Under the “late-start” plan, the fall semester would not end until Jan. 22.

“We are the customers here,” said Brian Stock, student body president at Mesa College. “We have to buy the product. If you change the product, we may not decide to buy.”

Student and faculty speakers told the board they were overwhelmingly opposed to the “late start” calendar proposed by administrators. Stock presented a 1,900-signature petition against the proposal from students at Mesa College. And Vahe Akashian, a Mesa faculty member, said that 95% of the 8,200 students surveyed on the question throughout the district preferred the early start.

School officials said the change could maximize community access to classes. They said that, since the community college district went to the August starting date in 1982, enrollment has plunged from about 40,000 to the current 34,000.

Translated into dollars, the falling enrollment has been costly. Just the drop from last year--an estimated 5,000 students--means the district is facing a potential $6.6-million deficit by June, said one official.

“Clearly there’s a correlation between the early start and the declining enrollment, but we’re not saying that’s the only cause,” Jeanne Atherton, district director of instructional and student services, said before Wednesday’s meeting.

“Tuition may be a reason,” she said. “The fact that the economy is picking up may be a reason. But we don’t have much control over anything except the calendar.”

Atherton said the later starting date was calculated to synchronize with the traditional fall class start for students in the public schools and at SDSU. That way, she said, parents hoping to attend a community college could do so while their own children were in public schools; students shut out of classes at SDSU could pick them up at the community colleges.

The early start discouraged some potential students because parents would have to hire baby sitters, she said. It also meant that would-be SDSU students would be reluctant to switch and enroll in community college classes that had been under way for almost a month, she added.

Atherton admitted that officials offering the proposal Wednesday night had no projections of how many additional students would enroll or how much more money would come into the district because of the later start.

Her arguments were effectively countered by Akashian, who represents the faculty on the district’s “calendar” committee. He pointed out that of the 42 community colleges in the state that changed to late-start calendars, only seven improved their enrollments. The rest lost students.

Under the early-start plan, fall classes began Aug. 17 and ended by Christmas. The spring semester commenced Jan. 13 and will end May 29.