The #s on Chancellor Martin’s Escalating Enrollment Crisis | Rally Weds. for Arrested UC Grad Worker Union Activists

Enrollment at City College is strong! Currently, the average credit section at CCSF has about 22.4 students in it—up about 6% from last year. Administration estimates of FTES enrollment have also been somewhat higher than last year. If present trends continue, we estimate that CCSF is on track to have its highest average class size since the accreditation crisis.

But in specific areas, CCSF is struggling to meet student demand, in ways that impact our overall enrollment. Many of these are areas where the administration enacted layoffs last year, and have not yet recalled the lost faculty. Yesterday morning, AFT 2121 wrote the following message to its list of over 13,000 community members notifying them of the crisis and urging the Board of Trustees to take urgent action.

1. As of July 13, there are enough students on waitlists for English 1A and 1AS to fill 6 additional sections of 1A (including 3 of 1A+1AS). There are over 200 students on the waitlist for English 1A, roughly evenly split between online and in-person classes; over 100 of those students are also on waitlists for 1AS. Essentially all of the existing sections are full—there are a total of 17 seats available, including seats that are reserved for students already on thew waitlist.

2. English 1A is important because it’s the college’s most popular course and is a transfer requirement for most students, but it’s not unique. There are 166 courses, comprising 358 sections—over 20% of the sections offered at the college—where there are more students on waitlists than open seats in the course. This includes core courses in several programs where laid-off full-time faculty still have not been rehired—chemistry, physics, and business—as well as in programs like biology and architecture where laid-off faculty have been offered rehire but the college still struggles to find adequate staffing. Across all of these courses, there are 1742 students on waitlists waiting for 133 seats—even if all of those students had flexible enough schedules to pick up any empty seat, there would still be 1609 students left out in the cold.

3. This problem is only getting worse—on July 2, less than 6% of students who had signed up so far had found themselves on waitlists instead of in classes; 14% of students who have tried to enroll since July 2 have found themselves on waitlists.

4. Last year, over 20% of enrollment happened after July 13—in other words, we should be expecting over 25% growth in enrollment before the first day of classes. 332 classes—comprising 731 sections, over a third of the course offerings at CCSF—do not have room to grow by 25%. Under this scenario, over 6700 students will be unable to find the classes they need. That’s about 18% of current enrollment—in other words, most of the students we would expect to enroll between now and August will not be able to find the classes they need. (This is because while full or nearly-full classes don’t comprise a majority of classes, they do comprise a majority of enrollment.)

It’s crucial for CCSF to avoid this catastrophic loss of potential enrollment by adding sections NOW in courses that are overfull or on track to overfill. It will take time to move students from waitlists to new sections when those sections open—worse, there are dozens of courses where every section already has a full waitlist, meaning students aren’t even able to register their interest in their desired courses. We urgently need to make sure a student who tries to sign up for a course like CHEM 32, BIO 120, AUTO 50, ART 126, CNIT 106, or CS 177 tomorrow or next week isn’t turned away completely.

On June 29th, three UAW members at UC San Diego were arrested, charged with felonies, and held in jail overnight — all for allegedly chalking a building to protest UC’s refusal to fairly implement our union contracts. This comes after 67 workers at UCSD were charged with student conduct violations that could result in expulsion for protesting contract violations at a University event. UC is trying to back out of the promises they made in our contracts, and they can’t see any way out of their obligations other than intimidating workers. These arrests are an attack on our fundamental rights to free speech and collective union activity, and workers on every campus are fighting back.

SAVE THE DATE : Wednesday, July 19, UAW will be rallying outside the UC Regents Meeting at 7:40am on July 19th at the Rutter Center in Mission Bay to tell UC we will not be intimidated. We’re gathering at 7:30 at Koret Plaza– can you make it?

You can sign-up here to RSVP for the rally, and sign the petition demanding that UC drop the charges.

To learn more about this incident, read this exclusive KPBS reporting or this article by UAW 2865 president Rafael Jaime, and sign the petition demanding UC drop these unjustified charges.