Private school transfers dropping Students prefer a clearer path to public universities

Pierce College leads the district with overall transfer rates to public California institutions, however transfer rates to private and elite universities are in the single digits for the school.

According to the LACCD Office of Institutional Research, in 2012, 4,628 students transferred from one of the district’s nine colleges to a California public institution. Of those students, 1,247 were from Pierce College, about 27 percent of all transfers.

STEVEN TAN Reporter @stevent_roundup

The district’s new student information system PeopleSoft has hindered students, and faculties’ ability to access and submit applications and add classes at Pierce.

Dean of Student Services

William Marmolejo said that the new system was overwhelmed with student records, resulting in the technical errors.

"When you have thousands and thousands of records, old records as well as new students coming in there, the system takes a break,” Marmolejo said.

“Students couldn't even register for classes on day two. We were scrambling. We found out it was one of the servers we set up. We fixed it, and we haven't had a problem since then.”

AJ Dimalanta, a full-time student, said that registering for classes has been more confusing since the implementation of the new system.

“Searching for classes now is more complicated,” Dimalanta said. “With a little more instruction it could be manageable, because once they introduced the website they kind of lose you. They should display the new process on how to do these things. The system crashes a lot and is not the best.”

Student Roni Rosen said that the financial aspects of dropping and paying for classes was the most tedious to figure out. “To make it easier to access, I would want things to be more clear. I was able to pay for classes, but the only thing was that I couldn't drop a class, and it didn't really tell me how much money I was expected to get in return. I had to go wait in line at the business to find out,” Rosen said.

Lauren Dziedzic, said that because the system was down during the summer, it was more frustrating trying to sign up for classes for the semester.

"The first time I logged in and saw it was available, the link was a bad link and the system was down a few times,” Dziedzic said. “Especially during summer before school started which made it difficult for me.”