Community College System

The acting dean of student services and special programs for the California Community Colleges has been arrested on charges of embezzling more than $400,000 through a phony corporation. State Department of Justice agents arrested Robert Franklin Howard, 42, in the state chancellor's office in downtown Sacramento shortly after 6 p.m. Monday on accusations of grand theft and conflict of interest.

There are many who feel that even commenting on population growth and its problems is tantamount to infringing on growth and its civil liberties. Is there any chance that the following stories had their beginning in the fact that we have too many people and too little room and jobs? In a recent issue of the Orange County section of The Times, I found the following stories on just three pages! Do you think the rising population has anything to do with any or all of these stories?

A mother and son strolled across the Golden West College campus Friday afternoon sharing their memories of the school. Dr. Adrian Eric Ramos, 40, a Modesto physician, pointed to one sidewalk on campus. "Hey, I remember skateboarding here," he said. His mother, Enriqueta Lopez Ramos, 63, smiled. "You'd wait for me while I took classes," she said. "Sometimes you'd get into mischief." Enriqueta Ramos now holds a Ph.D. from UC Irvine, and she gives much of the credit for her success to Golden West.

Why does California have community colleges? Four years ago, the Legislature took that question up systematically as part of the revision of California's Master Plan for Higher Education. Assembly Bill 1725, the omnibus community college reform bill that Gov. George Deukmejian signed into law in 1988, enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support. In the Assembly, it passed with exactly one dissenting vote.

A report released Thursday estimates that California will need about 2 million more students with post-secondary degrees to remain economically competitive with other states by 2025. The report, by California Competes, a group of independent business and civic leaders, projected that the state will need more than 5 million new students with bachelor's degrees or technical credentials by 2025 to fill job needs. Currently, the state is on track to have about 3 million such students in the next 13 years, the report said.

In assuming the reins of California's community colleges system, Brice W. Harris takes over at a pivotal time of long-range budget uncertainty, fluctuating goals and ever-intensifying pressure to educate a sizable portion of the state's workforce. Harris became chancellor of the nation's largest two-year system Nov. 6 when voters approved Proposition 30, the tax hike measure that avoided a $338-million cut to the colleges. Instead, the system will receive about $210 million more in state funding and is poised to serve 20,000 additional students this spring.

Thailand is close to establishing the country's first community colleges, modeled after the California community college system--in particular, after Ventura College. Responding to a need for a higher education system that is available to more of its population, Thailand set out to find a model for a new system. The California community college system--the largest higher education system in the world with 106 campuses and 1.

Gov. George Deukmejian on Monday signed a $7.2-million bill aimed at putting the California community college system on a firmer track toward improving the quality of education provided to 1.2 million students. The measure, by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was regarded by many members of the education establishment as a major reform of the often criticized two-year college system.