Proposition 92 could not have come at a more appropriate time for California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned last week that economic austerity requires government to slash $14.5 billion, or 10 percent, from the state budget, including state education. That means, according to Community College Chancellor Diana Woodruff, that there will be $525 million less funding and 52,000 fewer students attending in the 2008-2009 fiscal year. It’s very likely that this will greatly impact 263,000 Asian Pacific Americans, who made up one in six students last spring in 109 community colleges.
Proposition 92, on the Feb. 5 presidential primary ballot, would change the minimum funding formula of the Golden State’s community colleges, lower their education fees from $20 to $15 per unit, substantially limit future fee increases, and change the governance of the system serving more than 1.6 million students.
Nationally, Asian Pacific Americans have depended on community colleges, according to a UCLA report labeling them as the “overlooked minority.” In 2002-2003, 41 percent of all APAs in higher education attended these schools. Overall, 15 percent of all community college 2001-2002 students in the United States were APA. From 1980 to 2000, national APA enrollment at these two-year schools more than tripled, from 124,000 to 402,000 students.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, more than two in five students were APA in some San Francisco, South Bay and Alameda County community college districts last year.
Districts like these have allowed many APA students to complete the first two of four years of undergraduate work before transferring to University of California and California State University campuses. For many, attending local community college saves thousands of dollars in tuition and housing.
These institutions have provided vocational training for high-growth professions such as nursing, where APAs serve in large numbers. Vital English as a Second Language instruction — despite long waiting lists — has allowed immigrants to assimilate as new citizens or productive workers.
But signs of recession from meltdowns in mortgage and stock markets are rippling through the economy. Historically, enrollment increases at community colleges have coincided with bad economic times, as workers and the unemployed re-enter the classroom and retrain for new jobs. This is not a time to rollback these programs, but to open the state’s community college doors wider by voting for Proposition 92.