Huge Online Demand Reshapes California Community Colleges

This story is completely accurate. I'm teaching on campus this semester, and whereas I normally have 40 students (the cap) in my Comparative and International Politics courses, neither class cracked 20 students at the start of the fall semester.

I also have a U.S. government class on campus, and it's full, but then, there aren't as many in-person, face-to-face classes scheduled compared to online remote (distance learning). 

The pandemic has indeed changed things. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "Overwhelming demand for online classes is reshaping California’s community colleges."

Student Debt Forgiveness Will Make the Problem Worse (VIDEO)

Here's the beautiful Inez Feltscher Stepman (currently my crush on Twitter), for Prager Univerity:

Arizona State's Power Play for California's College Students

A very interesting piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "UC and CSU deliver thousands of rejection letters. Arizona State wants to fill the void":

Kiana Tovar was all set to attend Sacramento State. Kara Smith had firm plans: enroll at Santa Monica College, then apply to transfer to UCLA. Israel Cortave had been accepted to UC Merced and UC Riverside, which both offer the computer science and engineering majors he wants to explore.

All three students are now attending college in California, mixing state-of-the-art online classes with small in-person gatherings. They’ve been able to forge friendships, stay on track with “success coaches” and learn about career opportunities from industry professionals. But the name inscribed at the entrance of the university they decided to attend is not a California public institution.

It’s ASU — Arizona State University. And its newest campus is in Los Angeles.

After years of steadily targeting California, the No. 1 source of ASU’s out-of-state students, the university has planted its first flag in the heart of downtown with a high-profile, multimillion-dollar takeover of the landmark Herald Examiner Building. The upstart program is too tiny to measure now. But California public university leaders have taken note — and are watching whether ASU President Michael Crow’s alternative vision for higher education will be a trendsetting incubator launched in Los Angeles or a failed incursion into a neighboring state.

Crow sees California gold in the tens of thousands of students each year who are delivered rejection letters from the University of California’s and California State University’s most popular campuses — the annual heartbreak happening now. He gives both systems due respect, but says they’re stuck in old models of enrollment tied to availability of physical space and are failing to embrace technology to deliver education. And UC campuses have responded to surging demand mostly by becoming more selective, rather than more inclusive.

“They’ve bought into the logic of exclusion as a part of the measure of success,” Crow said of UC. “I don’t think a public university can do that. Our mission as a public university is to serve the public wherever they are and whatever they need.”

At UCLA — the most sought-after university in the nation — the average GPA of admitted first-year students last year rose to 4.5 and its admission rate dropped to 10%. In 1990, UCLA’s admission rate was 43%.

Crow lays out a different vision at ASU: broad access over selectivity, with an 88.2% admission rate for first-year students entering in fall 2021 and guaranteed acceptance to those with a minimum 3.0 GPA and completion of required college prep courses. ASU has vastly expanded its capacity to become one of the nation’s largest universities today — doubling its total enrollment in the last dozen years to 136,000 in fall 2021. The biggest growth has come in online enrollment, which now accounts for 43% of ASU students, with a growing share at several satellite sites outside the main Tempe campus in Phoenix, Mesa, Lake Havasu and elsewhere.

Californians made up 14% of ASU’s total enrollment of 129,000 in fall 2020 — two-thirds of them enrolled in online programs. They represented more than 10% of the 14,350 first-year, on-campus students in Arizona in fall 2021 — a record — and nearly one-third of those from out-of-state. Overall, that first-year class grew 12% over fall 2020, as ASU bucked national trends of declining enrollment at community colleges and some Cal State campuses.

UC officials say they don’t see ASU’s latest entry into the state as a competitive threat as much as an opportunity to learn. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ says she regards Crow as “one of the most interesting thinkers in higher education today” and last year invited him to address her top advisors to spark ideas about how to expand capacity, which she views as one of the university’s most pressing needs.

In a recent interview, Christ lamented a 2013 study by two UC researchers that found that California enrolled a lower proportion of its college students at four-year campuses than any other state.

ASU has used online instruction, technology tools and satellite campuses to increase enrollment, all measures Christ is considering for Berkeley. The UC system is vowing to add at least 20,000 more students by 2030.

Christ describes Crow as “not being so much of a gatekeeper in selective admissions, but really trying to find ways of serving more students. The time has come for some very creative rethinking” at UC.

Cal State leaders, however, are acutely aware of Crow’s moves and wonder what they will mean for their own enrollment — which declined systemwide by 13,000 students last year — since the two universities draw applicants from similar academic profiles versus the more selective UC.

Cal State isn’t so concerned that ASU will siphon off students who want a full college experience — one leader called the ASU Los Angeles center a “stripped down version of a college education” without sports, clubs and other popular on-campus attractions. San Diego State, for instance, drew a record 77,000 first-year applicants for about 5,500 seats for fall 2022 — and those students want an on-campus, residential experience, said Stefan Hyman, associate vice president for enrollment management.

UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley recently told fellow board members that UC needed to up its game in expanding online learning and access to nontraditional students because “we have our friends at Arizona State University chomping at the bit to take California students.” Oakley later told The Times that he doesn’t “begrudge” ASU for targeting Californians.

“But I also think it’s a lost opportunity for our own institutions because these are California students that are ready and willing to get into higher education and we’re just not providing them enough access,” said Oakley, chancellor of the 116-campus California Community Colleges system...

Still more.

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

This isn't new, though indeed folks don't talk about it on campus, at all (at least at my college, and I surmise others, most others, in fact). 

Props to WSJ for the excellent reporting here. 

ICYMI, Christina Hoff Sommers has written on this stuff, here: The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men.

And from the article:

The number of men enrolled in college this year trails women by record highs, part of a nationwide education gap. Nobody wants to talk about it. https://t.co/RzPzSDIDPd

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 8, 2021

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.

American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.

“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.

Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.

Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”

Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.

“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.

The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.

No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”

Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.

The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.

“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.

It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic...

I don't trust this Framingham study. 

I'm at community college. I've been teaching online since March 17th last year. I suspect just as many women have been working outside the home to support their families as have men.

Who know, though? I'd have to see the data.

Either way, boys and young men are indeed getting screwed. Gender identity theory, and whatever other brain dead ideological abominations, have left men high and dry. 

Still more.

Massive Financial Aid Scam Hits California Community Colleges

This is nasty scam.

My division dean mentioned it last week and she sent out a long email notice to all department faculty members today.

Nasty --- and a bit unreal, to think about it.

At LAT, "More than 65,000 fake students applied for financial aid in wide community college scam":

California student aid official Patrick Perry was beginning a routine check of federal financial aid records a few weeks ago when he came across a mystifying number: 60,000 more aid applications from a particular group of students this year than last.

They were first-time applicants to California community colleges who were older than 30, earned less than $40,000 annually and were seeking a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate. They were spread out across the state, applying to 105 of the 116 campuses in the California Community Colleges system — with the top number at Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey, Merced and Antelope Valley. And their applications began surging in May through mid-August.

“We were kind of scratching our heads going, ‘Did or didn’t 60,000 extra older adult students really attempt to apply to community colleges here in the last few months?’” Perry, director of policy, research and data for the California Student Aid Commission, said Tuesday.

He alerted California community college officials Thursday. Around the same time, chatter emerged about abnormal enrollment patterns on a research listserv for community colleges, on which faculty were beginning to question whether some of their “students” were actually fake bot accounts.

The colleges and student aid officials put their heads together and uncovered what is believed to be one of the state’s biggest financial aid scam attempts in recent history.

California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students and said they did not know of any confirmed Cal Grant fraud, but the investigation is continuing.

Perry said he thinks the attempted fraud was stymied before much, if any, aid was distributed because community college classes are just starting and campuses are now on high alert. “I can’t tell you whether any money has gone out or not, but my guess is probably not,” he said. “I think we’ve caught it.”

It was unclear what financial aid may be involved in the fraud — state-funded Cal Grants, for instance, federal Pell Grants or COVID-19 emergency relief grants. California community colleges have received more than $1.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 relief for low-income students.

In addition, the fake applications are roiling the ability of college officials to determine true student enrollment numbers at a time of declining community college attendance and major efforts to recruit students and offer them financial and emergency pandemic aid to help them continue with higher education goals. Many professors are crestfallen trying to assess whether they have a class of students or bots.

Since last week, Perry said, the number of suspected fake financial aid applications has surpassed 65,000, and the problem appears confined to state community colleges. No irregular patterns were detected with the University of California or California State University.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General confirmed it was investigating but declined to comment further because the inquiry is ongoing.

But the financial aid commission and community colleges have found similar red flags for both admission and financial aid. Applications were missing a phone contact or had the same phone number on multiple applications. Numerous applications used an Outlook.com email address, listed student ages as old as 90 and repeated addresses — most to a vacant house.

“We were looking at the financial aid and they were looking at applications for enrollment and we finally put the two together,” Perry said. “The two just matched up and at that point we went, ‘Yeah, this is fraudulent.’”

The community college system is beefing up internal reporting and security measures after finding that 20% of recent traffic on its main portal for online applications was “malicious and bot-related,” according to a memo issued Monday by Valerie Lundy-Wagner, interim vice chancellor of digital innovation and infrastructure.

Nearly three-quarters of that traffic was caught by new software called Imperva Advanced Bot Detection, which was installed in July, and the matter remained of “grave concern,” Lundy-Wagner said.

“I’m certainly alarmed,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is on temporary leave working for the Biden administration. “There’s lots of unscrupulous players right now trying to access and exploit benefits, not unlike what’s happened with unemployment insurance and any number of other benefits that have been made available recently because of the pandemic.

“But I’m confident that the colleges have been able to identify the activity and are working to mitigate the risk to campuses,” he said.

Keep reading.

 

LBCC Loses Nearly $2 Million Amid Coronavirus

Yeah, but my college is expected to get $14 million from the Care package passed by Congress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram:

Long Beach City College has lost nearly $2 million so far due to coronavirus https://t.co/YtgK6toBdr

— LB Press-Telegram (@presstelegram) April 23, 2020

University of California Boosts Transfer Admissions

This is interesting.

And it's very helpful for me as a professor, because with efforts by U.C. to increase transfers, and real data on the increased numbers, I can better prod my students to work hard toward attending the U.C. system.

At LAT, "UC opens doors to record number of Californians, led by growth in transfer students":

UC opens doors to record number of Californians, led by growth in transfer students https://t.co/COB6Cbm8NY pic.twitter.com/xvz9Syf0xo

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 11, 2018

The University of California opened its doors to a record number of Californians for fall 2018, led by growth in transfer students from across the state, according to preliminary data released Wednesday.

The public research university’s nine undergraduate campuses offered seats to 95,654 Californians, nearly 3,000 more students than last year. Overall, UC admitted about three-fifths of the 221,788 California, out-of-state and international students who applied.

“After reviewing yet another record-breaking number of applications, our campuses have offered admission to an exceptionally talented group of students,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement. “With the benefit of a UC education, these accomplished young people from different backgrounds, with diverse beliefs and aspirations, will make California and the world a better place.”

The data reflect UC’s stepped-up efforts to reach more deeply across California for community college students, as it responds to growing pressure from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to open access for more residents.

Brown has long advocated the transfer option as a cheaper alternative to a four-year degree at a time the state is projected to face a 1.1-million shortfall in college-educated workers by 2030, and he has used his budget power to prod UC to adjust its admission policies. In recent years, state elected officials also have successfully pressed UC to boost enrollment of Californians and limit out-of-state and international students.

The mix of offers for freshmen and transfer students slightly shifted this year in response to such pressure. Most campuses increased offers to California transfer students and decreased them for freshmen.

UCLA, for instance, admitted 562 fewer freshmen but 64 more transfer students this year. Berkeley, Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz also boosted their admission offers to state transfer students. Offers to California freshmen were down at Berkeley, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz in addition to UCLA.

“Transfer students are the future of our university,” said Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, UCLA vice provost of enrollment management.

One of them is Francisco Cruz Tapia, a 24-year-old transfer student from Moreno Valley College who plans to study computer engineering at UCLA this fall. He said he chose to start at a community college to stay closer to family and save money. His costs were minimal, he said, because he lived at home and received a fee waiver for his classes.

At UCLA, his tuition and fees will be covered by Cal Grant and university aid, but he said he’ll need to pay rent in the pricey Westwood area. Cruz Tapia said, however, that the costs will be worth it for a chance to pursue his research interests in artificial intelligence.

“It was really challenging to transfer because I had to take a lot of math and physics classes, but I’m excited to go to one of the top universities in the nation,” Cruz Tapia said.

UCLA particularly focused on recruiting in the Central Valley this year as part of a joint effort between UC and California Community Colleges to increase students from areas with historically low transfer rates. Under the partnership, launched in September 2016, the college system gave UC $2.6 million to help students at 39 of its 114 community colleges become more competitive applicants.

Copeland-Morgan said the campus chose to work with four Central Valley colleges — San Joaquin Delta, Bakersfield, Solano and Reedley — because students there are more geographically isolated, often low-income and the first in their families to attend college. Many have less access to the resources and information needed to succeed in the competitive world of college admissions, she said.

Her recruiters made multiple trips to the colleges to help students and counselors understand how to become not only eligible but also competitive for UC admissions. UC requires a minimum 2.4 GPA for California transfer applicants, but Copeland-Morgan said most successful UCLA applicants have at least a 3.6 GPA..

UCLA boosted applications from those colleges by 29% and admission offers by 34% this year. Overall, the Westwood campus admitted students from 109 state community colleges...

RTWT.

Our 'Cry Closet' Education System

The University of Utah has installed a "cry closet" for students to let it all out during finals week.

Funny, I don't remember needing to cry during finals. I was ecstatic the semester was coming to an end and I got some time off from school, sheesh.

Here's Mike Rowe, on Facebook, "Our Educational System is Under Attack."

And for Prager University:

How to Level the College Playing Field

This is interesting, especially for me, a community college political science professor, struggling with low student academic achievement.

See, Harold O. Levy with Peg Tyre, at NYT:

Campuses that are overwhelmingly populated by wealthy students amplify the voices that jeer at our higher education system and energize those who seek to destroy it. It would be a tragedy if they succeeded. https://t.co/SamBMZE8ZC

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) April 9, 2018

The wealthy spend tens of thousands each year on private school tuition or property taxes to ensure that their children attend schools that provide a rich, deep college preparatory curriculum. On top of that, many of them spend thousands more on application coaches, test-prep tutors and essay editors. They take their children on elaborate college tours so that their children can “find the right fit” at schools with good names and high graduation rates. Enrollment strategists at these same schools seek applicants from areas where the data they buy confirms that income levels and homeownership are high.

The colleges make efforts to open up access to low-income students while at the same time culling applications in ways that give an advantage to the very wealthy — from the persistence of legacy admissions to the back door reserved for young athletes who excel in sports that flourish in rarefied communities like lacrosse, squash, rowing and fencing. Admissions officers don’t talk much about “development” admissions, students whose applications are favored in hopes their parents will eventually endow a new stadium or dorm. Increasing numbers of prospective freshmen apply for early decision, which can give the applicant a stronger chance of getting in but closes doors for middle-income students, who often need to make their college choice by comparing financial aid packages. No wonder, then, that in a group of 38 selective colleges, including five in the Ivy League, more students came from families in the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

Creating a true meritocracy in higher education would require serious, politically daring changes to our housing policies and the tax code, neither of which seems likely in the current climate. Yet people of means (and I include myself here) are complicit in a system that seems unable to stop itself from extending privileges to the privileged. If your late-model car boasts the sticker of a prestigious college in the back window, you are participating in a system that may be good for your child but bad for our country...

RTWT.

Jay Stephens Graduated College as an 'Off-My-Lawn Conservative' (VIDEO)

Another great video, from Prager U:

City University of New York to Revamp Remedial Programs

Well, good luck with that.

At the New York Times, "CUNY to Revamp Remedial Programs, Hoping to Lift Graduation Rates":

80% of CUNY freshman need remedial classes. But now, CUNY is rethinking its remedial programs from end to end https://t.co/yj09o1wxBj

— Elizabeth A. Harris (@Liz_A_Harris) March 20, 2017

Twenty-thousand new students arrived at public community colleges in New York City last fall only to be told they were not ready for college-level work. Instead, they were placed in remedial classes to complete the preparation they were supposed to have received in high school.

But for a significant portion of these students, remedial courses will not put them any closer to a degree. The courses take time and cost money — or consume a portion of a student’s financial aid — while offering no credits. Many students, frustrated that they are sitting in class without progressing toward a degree, drop out. It is a pattern replicated every year, not just in New York but at community colleges across the country.

Now, the City University of New York, the largest urban public university system in the United States, is moving to fundamentally rework its traditional remedial programs. Administrators hope program changes this year and in 2018 will make necessary catch-up less of a stumbling block, while ensuring that students who are in college-level classes are prepared to do the work.

“The notion is that if you can succeed in college, we want to help you get there,” said Vita C. Rabinowitz, executive vice chancellor and university provost at CUNY. “No artificial barriers or screening devices. It’s a matter of true college readiness.”

Dr. Rabinowitz said that about 80 percent of freshman entering community college in the CUNY system require remediation in reading, writing, math, or some combination of those subjects. Students of color are twice as likely to be assessed as needing remediation as white students. But at the end of one year, only half of all students in remediation have advanced out of those classes. The need for remediation is a chronic problem at community colleges around the country as students graduate from high school without the skills they need for college.

“We had outcomes that were in line with national averages, which is to say very disappointing,” Dr. Rabinowitz said. The system, she said, was not working. “And if that’s not working, then CUNY is not working.”

One fundamental shift CUNY is planning will address how students are assigned to remedial courses. Traditionally, most students entering CUNY community colleges take placement tests in reading, writing and math, which determines who needs help. But researchers and college administrators around the country worry that these tests put people in remedial classes who could have done well without them.

In fact, ACT, the testing company, withdrew its placement test from the market last year over such concerns. Ed Colby, a spokesman for the company said that the test, called Compass, and others like it, were not placing students where they should be. Students who had been out of high school for a few years when they took the exam were particularly likely to be unnecessarily steered toward remediation, Mr. Colby said.

For now, CUNY has switched to a different test — ACCUPLACER, which is a College Board exam — but the plan is to incorporate other measures as well. David Crook, associate university provost for academic affairs at CUNY, said they were considering looking at students’ grades in relevant classes, or perhaps their overall grade point average. They hope to have a new system in place for the fall of 2018.

CUNY has also put in place an automatic retesting policy for those who score just below the passing cutoff on the math and reading placement tests. Since the option was put in place last fall, about 550 students have taken advantage of it on the reading exam, and of those, 49 percent passed on their second try. Three hundred students retook the math test, and of those students, 55 percent passed...

More.

One of the things they're doing is removing the algebra requirement: "CUNY will now require all of its associate degree programs to offer an alternative to remedial algebra, like quantitative reasoning or statistics."

Check back with me in a couple of years and we'll see how that's working out. Basically, keep dumbing down community colleges, and then guarantee your students won't be successful after transferring to a university for the bachelor's degree.

LBCC's Eloy Ortiz Oakley Selected as California Community Colleges Chancellor

He's the president of my college, moving on to greener, more powerful pastures.

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "BREAKING: Long Beach’s Eloy Oakley named chancellor of California Community Colleges."

Read it at the link.

Oakley's a glitzy showman without a Ph.D. He acts like some big mover and shaker all the time. Meanwhile, the overall quality of our college demographic continues to fall, and there's very little programmatic support that improves the classroom experience.

Anyway, good for him. We get a new college president.

Vivian Malauulu Beats Incumbent Irma Archuleta in Race for LBCC District Board Election

This is good news for my faculty union, which has been campaigning hard to elect a pro-faculty majority to the college's elected board of trustees. With Malauulu's election, the college will now have two strongly pro-faculty members of the board

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Long Beach election: Doug Otto, Vivian Malauulu win LBCC races."

My Buddy Tyler Featured in NBC News L.A. Tweet on Mt. Sac Bomb Threat

Here's my buddy Tyler chilling during the bomb threat at Mt. San Antonio College.

A @MtSAC professor waits in the parking lot following the school's evacuation. Credit: Allie Frickert-Murashige pic.twitter.com/PS1vo2P2Jz

— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) March 24, 2016

#BREAKING: Mt. San Antonio College evacuated, Walnut HS locked down due to reported bomb threat.

— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) March 24, 2016

Background here, "Bomb Threat Forces Evacuation of Mt. San Antonio College."

Free Community College

Community college isn't free. Someone has to pay for it.

When I first went to Santa Ana College in 1979, I paid just $5.00 for the health fee, plus whatever nominal cost for books.

But, while the cost of college was virtually free to me, the student, it's the taxpayers who finance the education, because it costs a lot of money to pay for all the teachers, bricks and mortar, and all the other expenses. And in fact, I'm not against free community college. If the state promises to provide public education for all who might profit from it, at public expense, then the state should keep its promise. California and other states haven't kept their promise for free community college for decades. But they haven't renounced the promise.

Indeed, President Obama has been campaigning for free community college for some time now, and yesterday the White House released a new report on the initiative, "America’s College Promise: Progress Report on Free Community College."

Long Beach City College is cited at the report:

Long Beach College Promise: Long Beach City College (LBCC), California StateUniversity-Long Beach (CSULB), Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) and the City of Long Beach have collaborated to provide a free semester of tuition to all localhigh school graduates, with guaranteed transfer admission to CSULB for those interested in completing a bachelor’s degree program. To date, the program has provided a free semester for more than 7,000 local students. This month the Long Beach College Promise will announce that it will extend the free tuition scholarship to one full academic year at LBCC. The success of the program has become a model for other California schools. In 2013, Cuesta College announced that it would eliminate the first semester of tuition for incoming San Luis Obispo County students.

Plus, lots about this in the news.

At the Washington Post, "Obama on free community colleges: 'This isn't rocket science'."

And at the PBS News Hour, "The free community college experiment everyone is watching."

But see Reason, "Obama's Grandiose Plan Will Give Community College Administrators the Last Laugh at Our Expense," and the Daily Signal, "Five Caveats to Obama’s ‘Free’ Community College Proposal."

Colleges Reject Charge That Freshman Reading Lists Have Left-Wing Political Bias

Actually, I don't have a problem with most of the readings cited at this piece, at the Los Angeles Times.

Some of the greatest in classical literature is inherently progressive and humanistic.

The problem is when leftist professors indoctrinate students with an endless stream of race, class, gender and homosexual advocacy, at the expense of a broad pedagogical approach. And there's really no debate on whether that's happening.

In any case, here's this from the article:

Freshmen at colleges around the country for years have been assigned to read the same books as a way to bond at orientation and to encourage intellectual interactions rather than just social ones.

But this year, some of the reading selections are coming under attack.

In South Carolina, for example, the state Legislature tried to cut funding for two state universities that selected books with gay themes.

The conservative Young Americans for Freedom compiled a list of those books that they contend offer only left-leaning perspectives, including "Americanah," a novel by a celebrated Nigerian writer that was picked this year at Pomona College, Penn State, Duke University and Macalester College.

The National Assn. of Scholars had another beef. It advocates the classics and argued in a recent report that by frequently selecting contemporary literature, "colleges are implying that students have little to learn from the past. Or perhaps they simply think students' attention spans are too limited for them to want to pick up such a book and read it on their own."

The group suggested schools should instead assign such alternatives as James Fennimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans," Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," Shakespeare's plays, and selections from the Bible.

Colleges deny any political intent. They say they seek high-quality books that provoke debate and that they are encouraging it as an academic experience amid all the other events and parties during those first few days on campus. Because many schools invite authors to campus, classics by long-dead writers don't fit the bill and there are other opportunities to study them, colleges say.

A common book "is a tangible bond but it has intellectual heft as opposed to just wearing the school colors," said Cheryl Spector, director of academic first-year experiences at Cal State Northridge, where this year's common reading is "The Postmortal," a futuristic novel by Drew Magary about possible immortality and a cure for aging.

Critics misunderstand the programs' goals, she said: "The fact is we are not trying to pick literary masterpieces primarily, although we don't mind it if we hit them. But we do want engagement with students. We want to invite them to a love of reading."

Nearly 40% of colleges ask students to participate in such readings, according to a recent survey by the Assn. for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education.

UCLA this year chose baseball hero and former Bruin Jackie Robinson's autobiography, "I Never Had It Made;" the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is tackling Louise Erdich's novel "Round House," about violence on a Native American reservation; Williams and Trinity colleges selected Rebecca Skloot's "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," the history of how cancer tissue from a poor black woman influenced science.

At Pomona College, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah," a novel about Nigerians who emigrate to the U.S. and Britain and return home, was selected from 40 nominated books by a panel of faculty, students and others. Copies were mailed to incoming freshmen's homes.

Pomona's dean of students, Miriam Feldblum, said Young Americans for Freedom badly mischaracterized the book. The novel, she said, offers multiple perspectives of racial topics and American and Nigerian societies and emphasizes that people should not make assumptions about culture and history. Beyond its cross-cultural themes, it's a good book for young people because it examines long friendships and life's unexpected turns, she said.

The college aims for political balance, Feldblum said, pointing to the 2008 selections of autobiographies from both presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain...

More.

FLASHBACK: "How California's Colleges Indoctrinate Students."

Many California Community College Students Need 4 Years to Graduate

At least 4 years.

But see the Los Angeles Times.

Yeah, it's worse, especially for minorities, "New Report Details Need to Increase College Completion and Close Success Gaps for Underrepresented Students at State’s Community Colleges." (That's from 2010, but it ain't getting any better.)

ADDED: The student pictured, Jeffrey MacGillivray, was student of mine this spring semester at Long Beach City College. At the Times he's seen at El Camino College in Torrance in 2012. It's interesting that he's shopping around, taking classes at different colleges. Usually when that happens students are unsuccessful, so they have to switch schools. I worked closely with Jeffrey, hoping to impart some sense of the importance of good attendance and punctuality, as I do for all of my classes. Also interesting is how all the students pictured have the smartphones out, texting and talking as soon as they get out of class.

Stunned Unions Cry Foul After Court Strikes Down Tenure Rules

I'm not reading too much into this decision, out of Los Angeles Superior Court, striking down teacher tenure in California.

The case could be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, given that unions are regulated under national laws like the NLRA. So there's a long way to go before we'll have a true sense on the future of tenure. And I'll tell you, if it wasn't for tenure I could very well have been canned by now. Honestly, leftist ghouls have contacted my college probably a dozen times. No matter that it's mostly been lies, my college administration is oozing with literally demonic leftist ideologues who care nothing about student learning and all about raw power. And allegations of racism and sexism, like the left's boatload of lies I've dealt with, are the raw fuel that powers contemporary college administrators across the country. If you're a conservative professor, academic tenure probably isn't the first on your list of education reforms.

In any case, at Hot Air, "Wow: California judge strikes down tenure for public-school teachers as violating students’ right to quality education."

And at LAT, "Unions cry foul after California teacher tenure rules struck down":

Teacher unions are criticizing a judge's decision to overturn a California law that has long protected the state's public educators -- even ineffective ones -- through tenure and seniority.

In his ruling Tuesday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu said the laws governing job security were unconstitutional because they harmed predominantly low-income, minority students by allowing incompetent instructors to remain in the classroom.

The protections "impose a real and appreciable impact on students' fundamental right to equality of education," he wrote. "The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience."

State and local teachers’ unions reacted swiftly, saying the ruling was misguided and that poor management was to blame for districts that fail to root out incompetent instructors.

"This is a sad day for public education," said Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. No student should endure an ineffective teacher, she said, "but in focusing on these teachers who make up a fraction of the workforce, [Treu] strips the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job of any right to a voice."

Students would benefit more, for example, if advocates focused on smaller classes and increasing the number of counselors, said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president-elect of United Teachers Los Angeles.

The verdict represents a major loss for teacher unions and an undiluted victory for the attorneys and families that brought the landmark case on behalf of a well-funded Silicon Valley group.

More.

I think the decision represents a larger attack on the unions, and that's a good think. Tenure protections don't have to be tied to union membership. It'll be a good thing if this case moves the needle toward weakening entrenched union power, especially in California where unions are the largest, most powerful organized interest in the state.

University of California Seeks Increase in Community College Transfers

Good luck with that.

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "UC schools aim to enroll more community college students."

LBCC is ranked 53 among the state's community colleges, with 89 students transferring to a UC campus in 2012-13.

LBCC Tiered Tuition Scheme Scam Makes Front Page at the Los Angeles Times

As long as the State of California remains ostensibly committed to the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education any two-tiered tuition scheme's a perverted scam. That was basically my argument when I spoke last semester at the campus progressives' discussion on the "privatization of education." (The event video is here, "LBCC - United States of ALEC, Part 1.") (Interestingly, the whole deal was an anti-Koch brothers bash-fest, although there's no evidence that the Kochs helped pass the tiered-tuition legislation. More interestingly, I was invited to speak because the campus progs thought I'd parrot some alleged right-wing talking points on "privatization." The dopes, lulz. Perhaps there's some utility in developing more rational, cost-based pricing systems for the community colleges, but as long as the state says it's still committed to "open access" higher education --- which when I attended Santa Ana College in the late-'70s was just $5.00 for a student health fee --- then I'm not going to endorse a policy that's essentially predicated on lies.)

Another point I make (at the end of my discussion at the clip) is that the policy's largely an in-house career boosting bid for LBCC Superintendent-President Eloy Oakley. He lacks a Ph.D., so if he ever hopes to move on to another college, he'll need some dramatic policy innovations to augment his measly creds.

It's all a scam. Oakley nearly admits so much at the Los Angeles Times today, "Long Beach City College experiments with tiered pricing":

Educators and experts say colleges nationwide may be watching the Long Beach experiment, one of the only such programs in the country, as a way to get around budget cuts and high demand for required courses.

The five higher-priced winter courses at Long Beach included offerings in environmental science and geography. The college had to cancel a business course because of lack of interest. Four of the courses are needed to fulfill requirements in a major or to transfer.

College President Eloy Ortiz Oakley said he wasn't concerned that some of the classes didn't reach capacity. The school didn't have much time to plan which courses to offer.

"We're going to learn as we go," he said.

The college also couldn't offer in-demand lower-level math and reading courses during the winter session because it is too short. Those courses may be available at a higher cost during the longer summer session, although Oakley said he was unsure how long the school would continue the pilot program.

Critics decry the idea, saying it gives wealthier students an unfair advantage.

"It creates two types of students: those who can pay and those who cannot. And it's unfair to the students who have to feed families and are unemployed," said Andrea Donado, the student representative on the Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees.

"Philosophically it is the mission of our community colleges to provide accessible education. By making some courses [more expensive], that equality is no longer honored," said Lynette Nyaggah, president of the Community College Assn., which represents faculty and staff throughout the state.

Oakley, meanwhile, defends the tiered pricing option, saying that it's a way to offer students more choices and that he was surprised by the outrage over it.

"If our college can provide a solution — that may not be an optimal solution but gives our students options — then we're going to keep doing that," he said.

Yeah, who knows who long this will continue, but as long as Eloy gets his name in the paper it's all good!