The second student media teleconference was held Nov. 2 and hosted by the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, Dr. Sonya Christian. During the session, Christian mainly spoke about enrollment and how they could increase student flow on campuses. They also allowed half the time for students to ask questions, ranging from a variety of issues and challenges that arise with enrollment.
She began by speaking about dual enrollment and a hearing that occurred on Nov. 6 by the higher education committee about wanting to prioritize it.
“It shows out of a thousand students who start in the ninth grade, if that student was from a family that is middle or high-income only 440 of a thousand students will complete a bachelor’s degree,” said Christian. “If these students are from a low-income family that number drops to about 200.”
She then gave some good news surrounding the total enrollment numbers that have occurred since 2021.
“Although we had lost enrollments by about 18.6%, we have now regained in this last year by close to 5%,” said Christian. “So, we are over 1.9 million.”
For LMC, the school had seen a 10.6% decrease in headcount from 2020-21 to 2021-22 but rose 1.1% going into the 2022-23 academic year. Also, the school has seen a 6% increase from the past fall semester, with a total headcount of 7,921, compared to the current fall semester, with a total headcount of 8,396.
“We are anticipating an increase this year in headcount that will bring us back to above 2020-21 levels, but still below 2019-2020 levels,” said Ryan Pedersen, the Senior Dean of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness.
“We just announced a Central Valley demonstration project on transfer and we are focusing on three areas: finalizing the course sequencing, in what we’re calling programs, pathways, and mapper. The second aspect is focusing on STEM, and the third aspect is about data flowing,” said Christian. “Why is it that we have students go through multiple hoops to get enrolled?”
It’s a four-step process that wastes so much time for the students applying and that’s something that Vision 2030 is trying to get all this data into a “common data cloud,” according to Christian.
“I’m happy to report to you that at this point, we have 33 community college baccalaureates in the state of California,” said Christian.
“I was pleased when I was named the new Chancellor for the system that the Board of Governors and the chancellor’s office focused on the work we can do,” said Christian.
