The Chancellor of the California Community Colleges (CCC) Sonya Christian held a teleconference Wednesday to discuss the current collegiate landscape with student media throughout the state.
The meeting covered subjects such as Narcan availability, enrollment rates and fraudulent class registration.
“I want to acknowledge that this is a huge issue that we are dealing with because we have a decentralized student information system with 72 instances of trying to combat smart technologies that are getting smarter every day,” Christian said. “We are hoping that once we move to a more unified common data platform that we could leverage technology to find solutions as a long-term strategy.”
The CCC has also rolled out mitigation strategies recently such as the ID.me system.
“What ID.me does is it passes multi-factor authentication for existing student account holders. This way we can be able to catch the fraudulent aspect right at the front end,” Christian said. “For new students coming in, this is what they know. It is for existing students that we need to manage this change. I really encourage students to participate in the ID.me process because it is going to really help our colleges with all of the work they have to do in minimizing these fraudulent enrollments into becoming financial aid recipients.”
Vice Chancellor Paul Feist spoke on concerns over SB 367, a bill passed in August 2022 which mandates colleges in California to have Narcan on hand. Narcan, which is the brand name for Naloxone, is a lifesaving emergency treatment for opioid overdoses.
Editor-in-Chief of The Citizen Li Khan asked through Citizen advisor Eleni Economides Gastis’ Zoom account if the CCC had a centralized record of which colleges have Narcan and distribute it to students.
“We’ve been looking into that and the legislation does not require the community college chancellor’s office to keep those records, so I don’t think that we do,” Feist said. “We suggest that you check with the California Department of Public Health because the colleges and institutions that do want to provide Narcan have to apply there.”
The Chancellor also spoke of the rise in enrollment rates in California.
“We are officially above 8% growth. California’s increase in community college enrollment has actually surpassed the rest of the country,” Christian said. “So, when you take the California community colleges, we represent about 20% of the nation’s community college enrollment, but when looking at the data from Fall 2023, the growth we are responsible for is more than half of the nation’s growth.”
Update: This story was updated on Feb. 27, 2024 to specify that the question about Narcan distribution was asked by Editor-in-Chief of The Citizen Li Khan through Citizen advisor Eleni Economides Gastis’ Zoom account.