Press Telegram Defends Role of Community Colleges

Wrong cuts, wrong time
Published in the Press-Telegram, 11/23/2008
Community colleges serve a uniquely necessary role.

California is slicing deeply into its great system of higher education by raising student fees and restricting access. Nowhere will this cause more harm than to the community colleges.

The timing is awful. It is when unemployment rises and the economy is in upheaval that the community colleges are most needed. As Jeff Kellogg and Doug Otto describe in their column, people who have lost a job and need training to find another often turn to a two-year college for help.

Kellogg is president and Otto is a member of the Long Beach Community College District Board of Trustees. They see firsthand the damage further budget cuts will do. The college already has absorbed a loss of $3 million and now is looking at as much as $6 million more.

Statewide, a proposed cutback of $332 million would result in shutting the door to more than 200,000 students just when California's struggling economy has the greatest need for better trained workers and fewer jobs for low-skilled workers.

The two trustees are asking readers to write to their elected officials in Sacramento and remind them that community colleges are the best and sometimes the only source of training needed at this time. You should.

If you do, you might wonder whether this will affect the outcome. It might not.

But at the very least it will drive home a point that must be made if California is to remain a great economic force in the nation and the world. The state's system of higher education is essential, including especially the unique contributions of its community colleges.




www.presstelegram.com/opinions/ci_11053084