P u b lished for you every wedne s d ay
Your student-run newspaper Volume 44, Issue No. 15
L ariat
F e b r u a ry 2 9 , 2 0 1 2
Published since 1968
28000 ma r g u e r i t e pa r k way, m i s s i o n v i e j o , c a l i f o r n i a
Strike vote at CSU
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Jason Chung
Photo by Stacey Angeloff
A NEED FOR FINANCIAL AID: The Financial Assitance Program is kept busy with students rushing to apply for financial assistance after rising tuition fees from California’s budget deficit.
No such thing as free tuition Massive increase in fee waivers cuts into funds for community colleges from state
Public Policy and Higher Education. “Brown’s new budget ties community college financing to meeting performance goals, such as preparing students for transfer to four-year colleges,” wrote political columnist Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee. One of the recommendations is to require students receiving a BOG fee waiver to identify an educational plan, not have more than 110 units, and be required to show academic progress. The idea is to encourage students to get through the system faster. “If the 110-unit limit went into effect this year, it would impact about 400 students,”
See strike page 2
Once again, the Governor is asking students help balance California’s budget deficit as community college enrollment fees will jump to $46 per unit this summer. More will likely depend on financial aid to cover the increase, officials say. In December, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered $1 billion in midyear spending reductions, according to the Associated Press. These reductions mean community colleges will lose about $1 million each in the midyear budget shortfall. The subsequent fee hike represents a 77 percent increase in student fees within a one-year period, reports the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. How to make ends meet? One scenario is to get a Board of Governors’ fee waiver. A surprising 30 percent of Saddleback College students and 6 percent of IVC students have their tuition set aside, college officials report. This puts more pressure on the system because less revenue goes back into state coffers, officials said. “I’m mad at the cost jump but my education is worth it,” said
Cody Boukather, 18, mechanical engineering. “I didn’t know there was a fee waiver and I want to look into that.” The IVC freshman said he wasn’t aware that financial aid like the fee waiver was available. Nevertheless, to qualify for a fee waiver, a student has to show financial need, complete a simple form, and he or she need not pay the per-unit enrollment fees. There are three financial eligibility criteria including those receiving cash assistance from programs such asCalWORKS, students whose family’s income falls at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. For 2011-2012, that equates to a family of four with a gross adjusted income of less than $33,075. The third level is determined by a student’s individual needs. Additionally, colleges are required by state law to waive enrollment fees for spouses and children of disabled or deceased veterans, deceased law enforcement and fire fighters. Fee waivers are not, however, only given to students who fit in the low-income bracket. Students demonstrating need on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid are also eligible. A full-time married student with one child and joint income of $83,000 could receive $180 in need and be eligible for a full fee waiver, according to a report by the The National Center for
On the Web:
On Features:
On Sports:
On Features:
Learn about the hereditary disease cystic fibrosis in the Science Lecture Series.
Find out what college students from Hawaii think about going to college in the O.C. See page 3
See how the Gauchos did in the basketball playoffs.
Featuring the Italian Instructor Accomando with his new album “One More Chance”. See page 3
MaryAnne Shults
SPECIAL TO THE LARIAT
cycle we have 11062 applications.” I encourage all students to apply for FAFSA, regardless of income levels,” Alvarado said. “Let us determine if you are eligible.” He said students can still apply to have fees waived for this semester. Deadline is March 2. Both colleges provide comprehensive information online, including office hours, links to forms and applications, types of financial aid, contacts, and more. Visit http://www.saddleback.edu/fao/ orhttp://www.ivc. edu/student/finaid/. Lariateditor@saddleback.edu
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Fall 2003: Fees jump from $11 to $18 per unit – and again in Fall 2004 from $18 to $26.
Fall 1993: Fees jumped from $6 to $10, enrollment statewide dropped by 124,000 students
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Enrollments declined from 2.8 million in 2002-03 to 2.5 million in 2004-05.
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Saddleback Director of Financial Assistance Christian Alvarado said. Alvarado said with fees increasing, more students will qualify for financial aid. IVC’s Director of Financial Aid Darryl Cox concurs. “Hard economic times always increase the number of aid applications,” Cox said. “Fee increases always create hardships for those not on aid.” The number of IVC applicants for the fee waiver has nearly doubled since 2009-2010. “Our applications total for ‘09-’10 was 6786 and in ‘10-’11 our applications totaled 9312,” Cox said. “So far for the ‘11-’12
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The California Faculty Association called for a strike vote last Tuesday as contract negotiations with the California State University administration entered deadlock after 18 months. The CFA board of directors unanimously passed a resolution last Tuesday to ask CSU faculty union members to vote on whether to give the board authorization to call a system-wide strike if mediation and factfinding, the next two steps in the negotiation process, continue to yield no results. “We are reaching the end of negotiations,” said Brian Ferguson, communications specialist with the CFA, “and things aren’t going well.” For the past 18 months, the CFA bargaining team has been in negotiation with the CSU chancellor’s office over a new work contract for CSU faculty, after the previous contract expired on Jun. 30, 2010. However, talks have become stagnant as the two sides refused to budge on several important articles. “One of them has to do with moving more and more classes into the for-profit arm of the CSU, which is often called Extension,” Ferguson said. “Faculty get paid less to teach these courses, students pay more in order to register for [them]. We think these courses offer less to students and don’t create a learning environment that’s as good as what’s available in the traditional arm of the university.” Although the two parties have reached consensus on most of the more than 40 articles in the new contract, the CFA is still concerned about some of the proposals offered by the chancellor that they believe would ultimately degrade the quality of education. “With budget cuts in CSU over the last couple years, class size has increased with less faculty members on campus, less support staff, more advising work, more of the other sort of community work that often times goes unseen,” Ferguson said. “It has been very unsettling for faculty and they’ve seen their workload increase substantially over the last few years.” He adds, “We’ve said for a long time that student learning conditions are faculty teaching conditions, and we think that still holds true.” Saddleback College student Madison Zraick, 23, communication, saw both sides. “I understand where they are coming from with the budget cuts, because we do have to start finding ways to be more efficient with everything,” Zraick said. “But at the same time, no bonuses for working overtime or anything like that is pretty bad. The students suffer in a way because they don’t get as much attention. The teachers are tired.”
Source: http://www.cccco.edu/Portals/4/CFFP/Fiscal/Budget/FEEHistory.pdf
Graph by MaryAnne Shults
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