City College of San Francisco faces further class cuts to stem $13 million deficit

[TexasTowelie]

Despite cutting 12 percent of its class offerings and parting with at least 100 instructors and counselors over the past year to balance a $32 million budget deficit, City College of San Francisco may need to cut hundreds more classes before the spring term starts, administrators said Thursday.

The district faces another $13 million projected deficit for the 2019-2020 academic year due primarily to spending on salaries and benefits, officials said at a Board of Trustees meeting Thursday. The cuts threaten non general education courses, under-enrolled classes and programs including journalism and culinary arts.

Students rallied alongside newly elected District 5 supervisor Dean Preston on Wednesday against ongoing reductions. But administrators said more cuts are likely unavoidable if the college remains on its current spending trajectory.

“None of this was easy and it’s going to get more difficult,” said Dianna Gonzalez, senior vice chancellor of human resources, who said decisions on cuts must be made quickly because the class schedule for the spring semester is already available online, and enrollment begins on November 20.

Read more: https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/ccsf-faces-further-class-cuts-to-stem-13-million-projected-deficit/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Sadly, there is a diminished commitment to higher education.

States underwrite less and less of the costs of colleges, and students pick up the difference.

Some years back when I told my son that when I first went off to college that it was possible that a summer job at minimum wage, provided you lived at home and saved most of your wages, would cover tuition and fees at a public university in my state, he looked at me as if I were speaking Martian. His experience was that the very best a frugal student could do was to cover some small percentage of the costs.

As an aside, among the reasons medical costs are so high is that the cost of medical school is so high. Someone going to medical school should not be incurring a six figure debt. Well, no on going to college should incur a high debt, but medical school can be seen as a special case. When I become dictator of North America I'd summarily wipe out all medical school debt, and try to figure out how to encourage new doctors to go into rural areas to serve underserved populations.