Fewer County Students Go On to State Colleges

A majority of Los Angeles County school districts sent dramatically fewer high school graduates to California public colleges and universities in 1994, a worrisome exception to the statewide trend, according to figures released today by the state Department of Education.

In the fall of 1994, about 33,000 high school graduates countywide enrolled as freshmen in the California community colleges, California State University and the University of California, a drop in the percentage figure of 2.3 points from 1992. Among graduates of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s high schools, college attendance dropped 4.1 percentage points between 1992 and 1994.

Statewide, public college and university enrollment increased 2 percentage points over the same time period. But state figures show the longer trend is one of decline, with public college attendance down 1.3 points since 1987.

The report also showed that declining numbers of California students were taking technical and vocational courses that could lead to jobs, a finding that darkened the overall outlook for the future of recent high school graduates.

“It’s a chilling statistic,” said State Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin. “You can’t say a lot of kids aren’t going to college but they are preparing for highly skilled technical jobs. Quite the contrary . . . college enrollment is off and vocational enrollment is off too.”

The drop in public college attendance--as high as 40% for some individual schools--not only struck districts with many poor, minority students, such as Los Angeles Unified, but also more affluent school systems, such as South Pasadena.

School officials and higher education experts attribute the decline in Los Angeles County to a variety of factors, including lack of adequate preparation for college work. In communities with a larger base of students from middle- and upper-income families, officials said, public college attendance fell because more students were choosing private colleges.

Most cited, however, were a court ruling that effectively barred many illegal immigrants from the state’s two-year colleges, and state budget cuts that sent UC and Cal State tuition costs spiraling upward and led to freshmen enrollment caps throughout the 20-campus Cal State system.

“Every message California sent to prospective college students in the first half of the 1990s was a negative one,” said Patrick Callan, executive director of the California Higher Education Policy Center, a San Jose think tank.

“Through the early ‘90s, until last year . . . UC had raised tuitions 135%, and CSU by 100%. Financial aid didn’t keep up. Among people who worry about public schools, there is a huge concern that we are chilling kids’ aspirations for college. We shook the public’s faith in the early ‘90s.”

Overall college attendance by California high school graduates has declined more than in any other major industrial state, Callan said. A study of college-going students between 1988 and 1992 showed California’s rate falling 6.9%. New York, by contrast, went up 22%.

California’s public institutions of higher learning are the predominant choice of the state’s high school graduates, said Jeanne Ludwig of the California Postsecondary Education Commission in Sacramento. Only about 3.5% of the state’s high school graduates attend California private, independent colleges. Their enrollments also have declined, Ludwig said.

Some of the drop in public college attendance may be due to downsizing in the Cal State system, where funding fell by $200 million during the early 1990s. Enrollment dropped by 50,000 between 1990 and 1994.

Cal State enrollments are expected to grow about 1% annually for the next three years.

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Ludwig said some evidence suggests that many students who could afford to left the state to earn a bachelor’s degree. Between 1988 and 1992, according to one study she cited, the percentage of California high school graduates going out of state to attend a four-year college increased from 3.2% to 4.6%.

“That is a big increase,” Ludwig said. “Those who had the money thought they might be better off sending their kids out of state. [It could be] they lost rich kids.”

College counselors and admissions officials said the state’s just-ending economic downturn and greater difficulty in getting financial aid raise the barriers to all forms of college education high enough to shut out students who could have afforded it before.

Admissions officers and counselors staffing booths at the National College Fair held Monday at the Pasadena Convention Center said other states are beginning to see similar trends, although less severe.

“Any college here you ask, if they tell you their enrollment isn’t down, they’re lying,” said Jerome C. Martin, an admissions counselor for San Jose State.

The school is guaranteeing prospective students that they can graduate in four years if they make the effort. It also is trying to put out the word that although tuition has gone up, Cal State remains a relatively affordable $10,000 for students who live on campus.

But financing a college education is not the only barrier. Many school districts have cut back or eliminated college counseling, meaning that students have to navigate the tricky waters of the admissions and financial aid processes on their own.

In addition, said Jesus Rios, an outreach officer for San Jose State, many students lack basic skills. “Many college student hopefuls can’t do the times tables up here,” said Rios, pointing to his head. “Without their calculators, they are lost.”

Statewide, enrollment in so-called “a-f courses”--accepted by UC and CSU as meeting admissions standards--has increased 6.3 points over the last seven years to 52.8%. In Los Angeles County, however, that figure has declined slightly--1.1 points--from 1989.

Jose Barrios, a 16-year-old junior at Canoga Park High School, boasts a grade-point average of 3.6 out of a possible 4.0, but his combined score on the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test was poor and he is worried about doing better on the real thing. “It’s a problem, and I don’t know if I’m going to get in,” he said.

Barrios and other students said they have had few opportunities to meet with a college counselor to discuss such issues.

That doesn’t surprise Arnie Kaminsky, a college counselor at Foshay Learning Center near downtown Los Angeles. In 1980, when he headed the Los Angeles Unified School District’s counselor organization, the district had 1,400 counselors in middle and high schools. Since then, he said, the district has added 200,000 students and the number of counselors has dropped to 400.

But perhaps the largest problem in Los Angeles County, Kaminsky and other counselors said, is the state policy that requires undocumented immigrants to be charged out-of-state tuition and denied financial aid.

Based on the sample college applications that students fill out for practice, Kaminsky estimated that about one-third of the district’s high school students are undocumented, meaning that they are highly unlikely to have the money to attend. He said some community colleges bend the rules and allow students who have applied for permanent resident status to enroll. But most do not, and getting permanent status can take many years.

“It’s not the kids’ fault,” Kaminsky said. “I don’t know one kid who made a conscious decision to come to the U.S. It was their parents.”

Jose, an aspiring architect whose family illegally immigrated to the United States from Mexico eight years ago, is a senior at San Gabriel High School in the San Gabriel Valley, where the percentage of graduates going on to public universities declined 7.5 points. He said tuition costs have made his college dreams impossible.

As an undocumented student, he would be charged $130 a unit--or $1,300 a semester--at Pasadena City College. He could qualify for admission to Cal State Los Angeles, but the $6,801 price tag for a commuter student’s tuition and fees is even further out of his reach. After graduation in June, he plans to go to work and try to save enough money to afford college.

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“I’m disappointed,” said Jose, who asked that his real name not be used. “Mainly because of my dad. He’s been pushing me all these years to do good. He wanted me to go to college badly. I feel like I’m letting him down.”

Even legal residents and citizens are delaying attending college, school officials said, because of the cost. Many are going to school part time at community colleges or enlisting in the military.

However, some school officials voiced concerns about the accuracy of the state’s college attendance figures. The state reported that 100% of Palos Verdes Peninsula High School’s Class of 1994 went on to public colleges and universities, a figure that was contradicted by the school’s own survey.

Associate Principal Susan Nakaba said the school sent only 67.4% of that year’s graduates to California public colleges, and 28.7% went to private schools, such as Harvard.

State Department of Education analyst Richard Fattig said the state’s figure was incorrect and that the error probably came from inaccurate numbers provided by the state community college system.

All of the college-going rates were based on figures provided by each of the state’s three segments of higher education.

College attendance actually rose at certain campuses, such as the King-Drew Medical Magnet in Los Angeles Unified, where 41.1% of its Class of 1994 went on to a state college or university, a 23-point increase over two years.

Principal Ernie Roy credited the hard work of college counselor Antoinette Norris, who “works night and day and weekends.” She began at the school in 1991.

“What we do here is we’re smart enough to know each kid individually,” Roy said. “If there are roadblocks, we can actually remove them, which helps a lot. . . . The hardest part of this whole process is all the paperwork, the grant and loan papers, and a lot of kids will fall down on that.”

Times education writer Amy Pyle and staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.

* SCHOOL REPORT CARD

State figures on college attendance in each district. B6-B7