They say the act of transferring from community college to a four-year university has slowly become a thing of the past.
They say due to a student’s lack of understanding for the IGETC (Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum), money spent for unnecessary units and stacks of books is being thrown away and lost in a sea of ignorance.
They say, instead of blaming everyone else around us, we need to educate ourselves, take initiative in speaking with an academic counselor and complete the forms.
They, symbolic for the “powers that be” — mentors, administrators — say that we need to wake up.
According to a recent survey by Cal State Sacramento, which has tracked 520,000 people since 2000, done by, only one-fourth of
California’s community college students seeking a bachelor’s degree transferred to a university or earned an associate degree or certificate within six years.
What happened to everyone else?
Steve Boilard, higher education director for the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in Sacramento, recently told the Los Angeles Times, “There is a tremendous amount of pressure to get
community college student enrollment as high as possible, but very little pressure to make sure they complete or transfer out.”
It’s conceivable that in an effort to combat this “crisis,” the counseling department has coordinated a new Student Success Workshop Calendar.
The calendar is filled with dates and times of workshops for students to take advantage of, with topics ranging from “How to transfer to CSU” to “Time Management.”
In spite of the fact that counselors are putting forth this new effort, many students are still discouraged due to the ridiculous counselor-to-student ratio, which is causing long wait times before their short appointments.
Imagine if it were mandatory to see a counselor. When would 12 counselors have enough time to see nearly 20,000 students? Perhaps for administrators, a student’s ignorance of the transfer process is an easier solution.
Because if we as students don’t flood the transfer center with every single one of our questions, then they won’t have to invest in a new counseling department with more offices and more counselors.
Subsequently, all that is left for them to do is point the finger at us, and… say.
Is that what we want?