Though Jackson Community College is coping, the school can only keep doing more with less for so long, Allen says.
“Obviously we have a number of students required in each section to break even or make it profitable for the college,” adds Allen. “We can’t afford to run sections with six students in it. At some point in time I think we easily could say we can’t do anymore, this is all we can do. This is very difficult for us as an institution because we truly want to help everybody who walks in our door.”
“There may be a point in the near future, she says, “where we’re going to have to make some tough decisions and actually cap the number of students we can accept.”
The beginning of the end for open access?
So far Pima Community College is keeping its doors open to everyone who wants to enroll. The school offered more class sections this semester to accommodate the additional students who enrolled.
“But I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that next semester,” says Flores. “We need to see the magnitude of budget cuts. The kind of student we have and the kind of institution we are dictate our classes don’t go beyond 20 to 25 students on average. If the choice is to offer a 600-student class or no class at all, we’ll not offer the 600-student class. We’ll just offer fewer, smaller classes.”
And that might mean turning students like Nicole Rodriguez away, Flores says.
“When you don’t offer a course or a section, by definition, students are not being served, so in that sense you’re already turning students away,” he adds. “It’s not as if you put them on a waiting list; you just don’t offer the course and they don’t show up.”
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