4-year degrees
elude poor
By Lisa M. Sodders
Los Angeles Daily
News Staff Writer
February 24, 2003
Despite sweeping improvements in the past
decade, student transfer programs at
local community colleges are failing to
send significant numbers of poor and
minority students to the state's public
universities, a new study shows.
While Pierce College sends the most
students in the San Fernando Valley to
the University of California and CaliforniaState
University systems, just a small fraction
of those transfer students are blacks and
Latinos, according to the study by the California
Postsecondary Education Commission.
While non-Latino whites are the largest
racial-ethnic group at the Woodland Hills
campus and even at colleges with
significant minority populations, such as
Mission College in Sylmar, the
concentration of whites is even higher
among those who transfer to state
universities to complete work for
four-year degrees.
"Something is wrong," said
Sheri Osborne, a parent activist and
president of Advocates for Valley
African-American Students. Community
college "is a valuable tool, but you
really need some sort of support system,
almost like a mentoring program. These
people are not in connection with the
right people often enough to keep them on
the right track."
According to the commission's study,
California community colleges have worked
hard in the last 10 years to eliminate
transfer barriers by creating transfer
centers at each college and making it
easier for students to take classes at
different campuses without losing credits
when they move on to upper-division
studies.
Despite those extensive outreach efforts,
college officials say they have failed to
overcome the twin barriers facing most
poor and minority community college
students: inadequate preparation for
college and job or family-care
obligations that allow them to attend
college only part-time or even force them
to drop out.
"If you have to work full-time while
going to school and have family
responsibilities on top of it, it's just
a more difficult task than if you can go
to school full-time and do not have any
external responsibilities," said
Darroch "Rocky" Young,
president of Pierce
College.
Student transfer rates for the state's
108 community colleges, compiled by the
commission, show that non-Latino whites
and Asians are far more likely to use
community colleges as a cheap one-way
ticket to enter premier public campuses
-- such as the University of California, Los
Angeles -- as third-year students.
In fact, the typical freshman class at a University
of California or CaliforniaState University
campus is more ethnically diverse than
the transfer pool -- 42 percent
non-Latino whites -- from community
colleges, the commission found.
At Pierce College in Woodland Hills, more
than half of the UC transfer students and
a third of CSU transfer students in 2001
were non-Latino whites, roughly
proportionate to their population on
campus, where they make up 41 percent of
all students.
Asians also transferred in numbers
proportionate to their representation on
campus. But only 12 percent of the UC
transfer students and 17 percent of the
CSU transfer students were Latinos,
although Latinos constitute nearly 22
percent of all Pierce students.
Transfer rates for blacks were even
worse. They made up just 1 percent of the
186 students who transferred from Pierce College
to UC campuses in 2001.
Even at Mission and Valley colleges,
where Latinos are the largest
racial-ethnic group on campus, whites
made up a disproportionate share of the
transfer students.
"Latinos and African-Americans are
clearly gaining access to post-secondary
education, and that's important and
should not be overlooked," said
Richard Fry, senior research associate
for the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington,
D.C.
"But in terms of the big payoff, the
bachelor's degrees, students of color are
vastly behind their white peers in
getting the real prize in higher
education."
Brenda Haydel, a Pierce College student
who wants to get a bachelor's degree, can
certainly understand those odds.
The 48-year-old Woodland Hills resident,
who is black, said her parents encouraged
her to attend college, but she got a job
with county government right out of high
school.
And even though she attended Los AngelesCityCollege
and West Los Angeles College, she dropped
out after about a semester each time.
"It just didn't catch with me,"
she said. "I was not really thinking
of it; I just wanted to be on my own and
work."
But now she needs a bachelor's degree for
further promotion in her career with the
county Department of Mental Health. Three
years ago, the newly determined Haydel
began taking classes through the Program
for Accelerated College Education at
Pierce. The PACE program, which puts
students on a fast-track to an
associate's degree, has helped
her stay focused, but she still dropped
out for a year to care for her ailing
mother-in-law.
Now -- with her eldest daughter, Ashley,
a freshman at CaliforniaState University,
Northridge -- Haydel said she is more
motivated than ever to finish her classes
at Pierce and transfer to CSUN, where she
will major in business.
"When I see the young kids
now," she said about her community
college classmates, "I tell them
keep going; don't stop."
Analysts say college staffs need to do a
better job of mentoring minority students
and pushing them to excel despite the
hurdles they face in their pursuit of
bachelor's degrees.
"If the attitude is you've been
accepted, and we're going to give you a
set of classes, and we hope you come, and
we hope you pass; do your best, that's
not going to be enough," said Bob
Collins, a local district superintendent
for the Los AngelesUnified School
District. "The reality is we need to
support these kids."
Collins, who oversees LAUSD schools in
the southwest Valley, instituted a policy
of requiring students to commit to
college, vocational school, military
service or an apprenticeship program
before they graduate. The policy holds
counselors, teachers,
principals and Collins' own staff
accountable for reaching every student in
time.
And while Collins encourages students to
attend college wherever they can, he
finds they do best at four-year campuses
where they attend class full-time and
enjoy extensive academic support.
"We have always known that, if we
have the opportunity to place a youngster
at a four-year school versus a two-year
school, we want to do that because we
know their success rate at the four-year
college is going to be greater."
In the Los Angeles Community College
District, every one of the district's
nine campuses offers many transfer
programs and counseling services to help
students stay on the path toward a
bachelor's degree.
Nonetheless, community colleges often
find themselves competing for their
students' attention.
"Sometimes the biggest barriers are
the students' barriers," said Dan
Nannini, transfer coordinator for Santa
Monica College, which sent a whopping
1,944 students to UC and CSU campuses
last year.
"Maybe when they come to the
community colleges, it's not the primary
focus of their life. They're sort of
giving lip service to going to school and
(planning) to transfer, but they are
taking on jobs and getting married and
accruing credit card debt."
Experts say black students may struggle
in college because of lower family
incomes, forcing them to juggle work and
classes, and a dearth of role models.
Latinos face even more difficult
obstacles, said Fry, whose center
recently issued a report showing the
college graduation rate for Latinos is
the lowest among the major ethnic groups
in the nation.
Latino students are more likely to live
with families than other students and to
shoulder family responsibilities in
addition to their school work, he said.
They are also more likely to work more
than 20 hours a week, and many work
full-time.
Experts say the real key to college
graduation starts as early as grade
school, with parents encouraging children
to start planning for college well before
high school. UCLA recruits potential
students as early as middle school; CSUN
encourages local fourth-graders to
pursue a baccalaureate degree.
"In middle-income families, college
is not really a question; the question is
which college," said Vu Tran,
director of undergraduate admissions at
UCLA. "If you tell them young enough
they need to have a dream, the dream will
sprout."
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