Facing yawning budget gaps, California's public universities are shifting thousands of applicants into a community college system already swamped by newly unemployed adults and students priced out of other schools.
By holding down enrollment, the shift would help balance budgets at UC and CSU campuses. But officials say the move seems likely to worsen problems at the state's 110 two-year campuses, many of which already face budget shortfalls that have them chopping courses, laying off part-time faculty and cramming classrooms so full that students have to perch on windowsills.
"We hope to serve as many students as we can get in, but we're near the breaking point," said Jack Scott, statewide chancellor of the California community college system.
In particular, many educators fear that an influx of new students will further reduce the ability of many community colleges to prepare students for transfer to four-year schools. The more savvy newcomers may shove aside some of the existing 2.5 million community college students, who are struggling to work toward a university degree from the bargain-priced, but strained, two-year system, officials say.
The concerns are the more pressing because two-thirds of the state's college students, and most of the African Americans and Latinos, are at the two-year campuses.
Even before absorbing displaced university students, California's community colleges are projected to grow at least 4% this year, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office. A number of colleges say their enrollment may rise by up to 10%.
If students cannot get the classes they need to be eligible for transfer to a four-year college, they could become discouraged and drop out, educators worry. The San Diego Community College District, for instance, had almost 8,000 students on waiting lists for one or more classes before the current semester even began, said Lynn Neault, vice chancellor of student services.
The classroom glut, Neault said, is unprecedented.
Ophelia Walker, who recently returned to school to work on her registered nursing degree at Los Angeles Harbor College in Wilmington, was surprised to find that every science course she needed was closed to new students.
"I'm not too old, but time is very valuable to me right now," Walker, 33, a Carson resident and licensed vocational nurse, said last week. "I don't need to waste it."
