No Easy Path to an Associate's Degree

Gabriel Reynoso, a Stanton resident, got back into community college on a deal. He would give away the video recording equipment he co-owned to his business partner in exchange for a tuition-free pass into Golden West Community College in Huntington Beach.   

Ingenuity got Reynoso’s foot back into community college—seven years after he first left—but he has been met with other challenges navigating a downsized community college system that got even slimmer last week.     

The budget signed by Gov. Jerry Brown cut the California community college budget by 8 percent, which means students will pay $36 per unit in the fall, a $10 per unit increase in tuition. Tuition could increase to $46 per unit in the spring of 2012 if the economy fails to meet the projections used in the budget.    

Another challenge on top of rising tuition for community college students, like Reynoso, is fewer available classes and a smaller pool of faculty at work in Coast Community College District, which oversees Fountain Valley-area community colleges Goldenwest, Orange Coast and Coastline. 

“There’s not a lot we can do at the individual college level about that because it’s controlled by the state legislature,” said Michelle Ma, director of marketing, public relations and government affairs at Coastline Community College. 

Reynoso co-owned a business—one of many jobs he’s held on a long resume—where he and his partner recorded legal depositions and courtroom hearings on video. But he hungered for the stability only greater education could provide.      

“Everything needs education now,” Reynoso said. “I am just tired. I am tired of having to hustle to make money… I am tired of back-breaking work.”

So he made the decision to go back to school.

But the community college system Reynoso enters is far different from the one he remembers first enrolling in 2001.

Over the last three fiscal years, the California community college budget has been cut by more than $800 million, according to a press release from the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. 

Coastline is one of many programs trying to find a way to cope in a difficult environment.

Ma said the tuition increase could be the “last straw, that’s going to be the line for our students (who pay out of pocket) that they can’t continue.”

Further, even students who are interested and can afford classes might not be able to enroll.

The budget means fall 2011 class will have 2,000 fewer seats than then in the fall of 2010 at Coastline, Ma said. The college is protecting core general education-related classes that are transferrable to four-year universities, but that means cutting music, dance, and other classes that life-long learners might enjoy.

General education-transferable classes like introduction to biology and U.S. history carry waiting lists of hopeful students, she said.

Coastline has streamlined operations and reorganized departments to absorb additional duties to avoid hiring new employees to fill vacant positions, Ma said. Offering early retirement packages and leaving vacant faculty spots unfilled are also some of the ways that Coastline is cutting costs.

For students, the new California budget means more of the same—  higher costs, but fewers services and more hurdles to obtain a degree.

Remi Sekine, 30, a Huntington Beach resident is going for a second degree in pre-nursing at Golden West; she got the first at California State Long Beach in international studies. She is determined to get her degree, but that might take some patience. 

When asked about the selection of classes available to students, she describes the situation as “slim to none.”   

When a class, like physiology, which she is currently taking, opens up she jumps on the opportunity.

“If it’s offered you take the class,” she said. 

Reynoso, a pre-veterinary studies major, remembers when he had the option of dropping a class if he had a difficult time understanding the teacher. That luxury is gone. He said he used to take 21 units when he first attended community college, but he treasures every unit now.

That's the only way he'll get his degree.    

Minimum-wage jobs in customer service, back-breaking work in construction—“You name it, I’ve done it,” Reynoso said—has him hungry for more. 

Reynoso said he has received nine As in his first 10 classes. But that also means revolving his life around school. Work? The job offers don’t work with his school schedule so he’s turned them down.

“They say come in the morning, work full time, but I can’t do that,” Reynoso said. “That’s the biggest problem.”