Above: Students at the library at De Anza College in Cupertino before the pandemic in 2019.
Nation s largest college system: richly diverse student body with mostly white faculty.
By
March 1, 2021
At a time of renewed focus on race and equity across academia, the nation’s largest higher-education system is saddled with a byzantine and failing strategy to diversify its teaching ranks to more closely reflect its student body.
California’s 115 community colleges, serving a diverse student body of more than 1.2 million full-time students, rely on a little-known system of state fines to improve racial and ethnic diversity among faculty.
However, the fines are generated only when the colleges, which are organized into 73 districts, fail to employ enough full-time professors. The fines, which totaled $1.2 million in 2019, are charged to the districts based on a formula established in state law to favor full-time faculty.
If you ask the question of LACC’s homeless college students, too many will answer:
In our cars.
As President of the Rampart Village Neighborhood Council, an area inside of CD13 just south of Los Angeles City College, I am forced to ask the question every day on behalf of these students, even if the rest of City Hall doesn’t.
Many students who attend LACC, and the other eight campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), are the first in their families to attend college. Unfortunately, the pandemic and ensuing economic hardship have forced many students to withdraw from classes. Dropout rates are at an all-time high. To add to this academic horror, many Los Angeles community college students find themselves homeless. The reality is that nearly 20% of LACCD’s student body is homeless according to a District survey taken in 2016.
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Under any circumstances, rookie California legislators have a steep learning curve to climb before they can hope to get much done in Sacramento. It takes a while to build the relationships and forge the alliances necessary to pass legislation, to hire a solid support staff and to carve out a policy niche.
But the curve is steeper still for newbies joining the California Assembly or Senate midsession, without the support and camaraderie of a freshman class. That’s what the winner of the upcoming special election for the 30th state Senate District will face, and it is one reason but only one of many that the best choice in this race is Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles).