Hispanic students will be hurt by cuts

Not the time for state education cuts, report says
By DAVID OLSON, The Press-Enterprise, June 9, 2009

Proposed state higher-education cuts will exacerbate a projected shortage of college graduates and imperil California's long-term economic future, a new report says.

The Inland area, already lagging the state average in the percentage of adults with college degrees and in the proportion of high school students attending college, could fall further behind and continue to have difficulty attracting high-paying jobs, said Hans Johnson, author of the study and associate director of research for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

The report, released last week, predicts that the state will face a shortage of 1 million college graduates by 2025 unless current trends are reversed. Forty-one percent of jobs will demand at least a bachelor's degree by 2025, but only 35 percent of California adults will have one, the report says.

Instead of addressing the problem, the state is going in the other direction, Johnson said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing $2.75 billion in cuts to higher education as a reaction to the failure last month of five budget-related voter initiatives. Even before the May 19 election, the UC and Cal State systems reduced freshman enrollment by more than 12,000 students. Additional enrollment reductions are expected.

If California cannot produce more college graduates, businesses that need highly skilled workers will leave the state and others will not locate here, said David Stewart, dean of the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at UC Riverside.

"In my view, this is the most severe economic problem California confronts," he said.

Tax implications

The shortage of college graduates will worsen California's budget problems, because they on average make more money than those without degrees, and pay more taxes, Stewart said.

Only 19 percent of the Inland area's adults had a bachelor's degree in 2005, compared to 31 percent statewide. One way to increase that number would be to expand enrollment at Cal State San Bernardino, said Johnson.

But Cal State San Bernardino has less than 4 percent of the Cal State system's students. The Inland area has more than 11 percent of the state's population.

"There needs to be an expansion of slots" at Cal State San Bernardino, Johnson said. "You're not going to be able to have that if you're cutting back."

Cal State campuses also need to increase their graduation rates, Johnson said. Only about half of Cal State students who enter as freshmen graduate within six years, compared to nearly four of every five UC students.

More academic support, counseling and financial aid is needed to boost graduation rates, he said. Yet the state budget cuts will likely lead to reductions in all three areas, he said.

Cal State San Bernardino President Albert Karnig said no decisions have been made on where cuts will be made.

"We will try as best as we can to protect access for students and the retention of students," he said. "But if you are going to have a 10 to 15 percent cut in expenses, and 85 percent of expenses is personnel, at best we won't be able to do more, and at worst, we'll be doing some divesting when we should be expanding."

The cuts will also hurt K-12 schools, and that may make students even less prepared for college, Johnson said. California already has poorly funded schools and ranks 18th among the 20 largest states in the percentage of high school graduates who go to college, the report says.

Dropout rates are particularly high among Latinos, who are on track to be a majority in the Inland area within a few years. One in three Latino students does not graduate from high school. Reducing Latino dropout rates is vital to increasing the number of college graduates, Johnson said.

Patricia Gándara, a professor of education at UCLA and coauthor of the 2008 book "The Latino Education Crisis: The Consequences of Failed Social Policies," said the proposed budget cuts will likely worsen the situation for Latino K-12 students.

Latino kids are more likely to be the children of parents with low educational levels. Those parents want their children to graduate from high school and attend college but do not know how to navigate the educational system and prepare their kids for higher education, she said.

That is why good guidance counselors and experienced teachers are so important for many Latino children, Gándara said.

Yet counselors are often among the first school staff laid off during budget crises, she said. The low-income-neighborhood schools that a disproportionate number of Latino kids attend are more likely to have less experienced teachers, and seniority rules mean that these teachers are more likely to be laid off, further disrupting the kids' schooling, she said.

Reach David Olson at 951-368-9462 or dolson@PE.com