In the face of an enormous state budget deficit, administrators are quietly waiting to see what will happen next. The drawbacks associated with the deficit have already severely affected our campus.

Students and faculty wince with each new problem: possible slashes in financial aid, hiring freezes, class cuts and the dreaded overpopulation.

The budget deficit has caused contractions throughout the state. Budget cuts led to university cuts, which are causing enrollment caps and students are forced to attend community colleges where there is no cap and therefore serious overcrowding. Education is declining when it is needed the most.

Enrollment is up because one, students have lost their jobs and are looking for more stable solutions for the future so they enroll in school, and two, the 23 campuses of California State University are scrambling to patch holes in their straining budget, so they plan to turn away 10,000 students from their usual 450,000 enrollment.

Recent high school graduates, sophomore transfers and international students will have a more difficult time gaining entrance to CSU’s across the state.

Where will those college-bound hopefuls turn to next? Entrance to the community college system, of course.

A community college, like EC, has a low academic bar and no application deadline, which means that our campus can expect a lot more students than it can accommodate.

Class cuts and an increase in the student population do not make a recipe for success when it comes to an expensive college education.

The way that EC will regulate enrollment levels is by controlling the number of available courses. This is bad news for new students, because current students register for classes first. Fewer available classes means that they will fill up with enrolled students first, leaving the new students hanging.

Teachers are handling the overpopulation gracefully despite having their work cut out for them. This situation probably isn’t what they had in mind when they decided to get that extra master’s or that doctorate; those degrees are what were supposed to lift them from the difficulties associated with teaching overcrowded classrooms.

Professors have students standing in the back of their classes, the number of assignments to grade is overwhelming and parking requires some serious time management and ruthless stalking of the parking lot.

Granted, this isn’t a natural disaster and danger to our lives isn’t imminent, however, this is about students’ futures and the structure of our society is at stake.

The classes students are taking at EC count toward a degree. The classes have to be up to standard otherwise, if the student does manage to transfer, that transfer student will nto be able to survive academically without a stable education.

The sad truth is that they will not be able to perform as well at the university level. Because that evening English class was too crowded, due to six other English sections that were cut at the same time, the student didn’t properly learn how to structure an essay or how to use a source to support their argument.

It will not make the student very happy to learn that they paid for that English class at EC, got an B, but they are failing their English class at a university.

Our educational institutions have to shore up and maintain absolute standards despite enrollment increases. Students and faculty need to be confident that what they are learning and teaching at EC is still competitive at a university level.

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