Having been in the works since 2011, the Student Success Act of 2012 was passed by the California State Senate in a 36-1 vote last Monday.
Based upon the findings of the 2011 Community College Student Success Task Force, the bill aims to ensure a higher success rate among students despite increasing financial limitations.
According to the Task Force’s final report in December of 2011, “Only 53.6 percent of our degree-seeking students ever achieve a certificate, degree, or transfer preparation. For African-American and Latino students, the rate is much lower (42 percent and 43 percent respectively)”.
The report puts forward nine recommendations to the California Community College system, which include encouraging successful student behavior with incentives, increasing the education of basic skills students, and increasing coordination between colleges.
One of the major incentives the bill utilizes is a restriction of priority registration for students, Nishime said.
“(Priority) for new students are for those who’ve completed assessment, orientation and educational plans, while continuing students can lose priority for going on probation, or having (attempted) over 100 units” Nishime said.
However, before policies regarding priority registration can be changed, all community colleges will be left to individually implement changes to registration systems to better track students, as well as create an appeals process for students who lose priority registration, Nishime added.
Other new changes brought about by the Task Force that EC students should be aware of are minimum GPA requirements to receive financial aid, a limit to course repetitions for both normal and elective courses, and eventually, the adoption of centralized English and math assessment tests, as mentioned in previous issues of the Union.
Some students, like Natalie Vival, 18, Business Administration major, said she believes the changes could be a good thing.
“I’m trying to get where I want to be quickly, but there are alot of students here who aren’t really focused on a goal, and I just feel like it slows me down trying to compete with them,” Vival said.
Others, like President Tom Fallo, recognize that the changes could have unintended consequences.
“The demand on students is to focus, and there’s a good part of that, and a bad part of it,” Fallo said. “When I say that, what I mean is that yeah, you should be focused once you make your commitment, but many students, at any age, are still really exploring, so you have to be really careful with this focusing, because students will change.“
However, while the Student Success Act calls for many new changes and regulations, these new demands are being left to the schools to implement on increasingly dwindling budgets.
“This is in Title V, so it’s a mandate, but it’s another one of these unfunded mandates, because there’s no way we can implement all of the recommendations from the Task Force without additional funding” Nishime said.
While the bill still awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature, it seems likely that the new regulations the bill puts forth will be in effect for California community colleges relatively soon.
“We’ll be looking into how to best implement it (the Success Act) at the next enrollment management meeting, but the bill won’t go into effect until 2014,” Vice President of Student and Community Advancement Jeanie Nishime said.
