It is definitely a challenging time in education. Clearly, it’s not
business as usual. A 50 percent scale-back in available summer sections
severely impacted enrollment. As a result, several thousand students
looking to get a 2010 Summer Semester class here at Grossmont were unsuccessful
due to state budget reductions and state imposed caps on our enrollment. Students
who were hoping to earn extra credits this summer to meet transfer requirements or
to graduate sooner had to put those plans on hold. The cost-cutting aftermath was
discouraging to students who were depending on summer school this year in particular
as hundreds of courses were cut during the recent fall and spring semesters.
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Plans developed by our Enrollment Strategies Committee helped to accommodate as
many students as possible, while faculty ran their classes at course maximum with
every seat filled. And, there was a good effort with flyers and posters to address
why classes are full and what students can do. However, many desperate students
who wanted to crash a class waited in long lines and were left frustrated.
Sadly, as of the first day of summer classes, there were roughly 4,900 active
students on wait lists, or, in other words, more than half as many students
enrolled in a summer class requested to be placed on a wait list.
As of Census Day, Summer Semester headcount enrollment was 5,546, compared with
9,172 last Summer. In a comparison between Summer 2010 and Summer 2009, headcount
was down 39.5 percent, with a 44.8 percent decrease in units.
Our campus’ experiences this summer are indicative of a tremendous amount of
unmet need, and is a sign of the difficult times anticipated this fall,
especially in light of local high school graduation numbers at an all-time
high and a lagging economy causing a growing number of the unemployed who
are going back to school for retraining or a new career.
