June 4, 1999
By Domenico Maceri, PhD
"Do you think everyone should go to college?" a colleague and friend asked me as we were talking about enrollment patterns at the community college where we teach. It was clear from the tone of voice that he didn't think so. And I understand his attitude. We see a lot of students who walk in the door already draped in failure.
The question made me think about the twenty minutes I had spent a week earlier with a student who had received an "F" in the first two quizzes of my Spanish course. She was not a traditional college student in a number of respects. Married, the mother of two kids, and on welfare, she had returned to school to improve herself. Although she lacked many of the tools to succeed in higher education, she was taking a university-level Spanish class. And struggling. She hadn't a clue about how to study or what else she needed to do to succeed. I told her she had to come to class and complete the homework regularly. I taught her some techniques for memorizing vocabulary and verb conjugations. In essence, I tried to teach her basic skills.
Like many people who register in California community college classes, my student didn't possess those skills. She is not alone. According to the Community College Chancellor's Office, more than 30% of students who enroll at a community college need to take remedial classes. The actual figure is probably higher because many students who take only one class do not get tested and we don't know if they too would need to take remedial courses.
My student, like many of the 25% to 30% of students who routinely begin community college classes and don't complete them, needs help that goes far beyond the traditional relationship instructors have with students.
Many community college students need mentoring. It's the kind of nurturing that middle class kids get from their parents right through high school, and that university students receive from their graduate advisers while writing their dissertations: a one-on-one relationship which will help the student complete the degree.
At the community college it means holding the student's hand not with advanced research but rather with basic skills. The goal is similar to graduate education, but it is more urgent at the community college because many of these students have managed to collect a long list of failures throughout their educational lives. Another failure might mean the end of their attempts to gain an education and no prospects for a career that allows them to make more than minimum wages.
Unfortunately, the resources available in California's community colleges don't stretch far enough to avoid these failures. Many classes are too large and instructors don't have the time to provide the necessary individual attention that would offer these students a reasonable chance. At my school, some remedial English classes have 30 students. A colleague, probably the finest and most conscientious teacher I have ever met, told me that by the end of the sixth week, he had already lost 11 of these 30. They had given up. Yet, I know he had done his very best. He routinely phones students if they are absent to see if he can help. His office is often lined with students who go to see him before or after class. Would he be able to do a better job with twenty or even fifteen in his class? No doubt about it.
This colleague teaches full-time and finds the time to help as many students as he can. But the nearly 30,000 part-time instructors in California community colleges may not be able to do the same. Part-time instructors—who teach about 50% of classes at community colleges— are paid very little, given no health insurance, have no office, and teach mostly at night. They often have another full-time job or sometimes two additional teaching part-time jobs as they attempt to make a living.
It's a cliché that throwing money at education will not solve problems, but comparing the dollars we spend in California's school is instructive. The State provides 17,000 dollars annually to educate each of our UC students; 9,000 for each State University student, and 5,385 for K-12 students. Community colleges get $3,600 per student.
Each school system is distinct and has different financial needs. However, the huge differences in funding, the dire situation of community colleges, combined with the fact we deal with many students who are at risk, clearly suggests our state's funding mechanism is skewed.
More money is needed to reduce the ridiculously high rate of part-time instruction at the community collages. The size of basic skills classes needs to be reduced so that teachers can give students at risk of failure the one-on-one attention they need.
The community college system is a unique institution in higher education. It's the anti-elitist school par excellence, since any high school graduate or any adult over the age of eighteen is admitted. It's not a college in the old-fashioned sense, but it serves more than 1.5 million students in California annually. Right now, we aren't helping many of these students. We let them fill up chairs when we know they have very little chance of succeeding. The community colleges are full of bright, ambitious students who have never been served well by the educational system. First-rate teachers, who want nothing more than to see these students succeed, work at community colleges. We've got the potential for success. If the governor and the legislature would just fund the community colleges at a reasonable level, we could carry through on the promise.
Domenico Maceri (dmaceri@aol.com), PhD, UC Santa Barbara, teaches foreign languages at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA.
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