California's community colleges will slash enrollment by 250,000 students next year if cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are adopted, the system's leaders announced on Wednesday. The announcement comes in response to a proposal that would help close the state's massive budget deficit by cutting support for community colleges by 11 percent.
The issue is covered by Josh Keller of the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription).
If the budget cuts are enacted, the 110-campus system (more than double the size of the one here in Texas) will ultimately fire thousands of faculty and staff members, community college officials said in response to the proposal. The California community college system is the nation's largest, enrolling about 2.7 million full- and part-time students each year.
The system has never considered an enrollment cut of such magnitude in the modern era, officials told the Chronicle. A drop of 250,000 students would mean cutting more than the entire enrollment of the University of California system.
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