‘Free Flow’--It Spells Hardship for L.A. Colleges

El Camino College in Torrance has a large, modern campus with red brick buildings, tree-lined walkways and extra facilities that range from a planetarium to a sports complex.

Four miles away sits Southwest College, one of nine colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District. Its campus consists of one huge building, whose blank exterior looks more like a home for computer banks than a college, and a collection of old wooden bungalows.

Not surprisingly, El Camino has had no trouble attracting students recently, while Southwest has lost nearly half of its enrollment in the last two years.

Los Angeles community college officials charge that El Camino’s enrollment is being propped up by an increasing number of Los Angeles residents who are attending school outside the district.

Two years ago, however, it was the Los Angeles officials who blundered into encouraging a “free exchange of students” with suburban colleges, a policy that they have since tried to reverse when enrollment plummeted at district campuses.

Pressure for Free Flow

Now it might be too late. In recent months state officials have come under increasing pressure to declare a “free-flow” policy for all community college students.

Before Proposition 13 of 1978, community colleges in California were financed like public school districts, and students were required to attend a campus in the district where they lived.

Since then, the state has paid most of the cost of running two-year colleges, just as it does with the four-year universities.

The case of El Camino and Southwest College illustrates both the attractiveness of the “free-flow” idea for community college students and the harm that it can cause for a college suffering from a severe enrollment decline.

El Camino College serves the beach communities of the South Bay but sits on Crenshaw Boulevard, the boundary between the Los Angeles and El Camino districts.

“You can live directly across the street from here in Gardena (in the Los Angeles district), so why would that student want to drive to Southwest or 12 miles down to Harbor College?,” asked El Camino President Rafael Cortada.

Average Age Is 27

The average age of a community college student is 27, he said, and “when you are dealing with adults, they are going to do what’s convenient and what’s best for them.”

What’s best for the students has also been best for El Camino of late. While the Los Angeles district lost nearly 30% of its students in the last two years, El Camino’s enrollment has been stable. However, about 6,400 of its 25,000 students enrolled this year are Los Angeles residents, including some who live in the Southwest College area.

Officials are divided on what effect the state’s new student fee of $50 per semester has had on community colleges. “It’s had no effect that I can see,” Cortada said.

You don’t get the same answer in Los Angeles. Enrollment has fallen from a peak of 136,000 in 1981 to about 90,000 this spring, and district officials blame the state-imposed fee for triggering the exodus.

But an increasing number of students who have left Los Angeles colleges have enrolled in nearby suburban colleges.

About 60% of Santa Monica College’s enrollment of 18,000 students are Los Angeles residents. Meanwhile, West Los Angeles College--in the Los Angeles district--has lost 22% of its students since last year, sinking to a spring enrollment of about 6,400.

El Camino’s student body includes thousands from the Harbor and Palos Verdes areas who live in the district served by Los Angeles Harbor College. Harbor has lost 17% of its students since last spring.

Thousands Go Elsewhere

Los Angeles students by the thousands also have enrolled in community colleges in Glendale, Pasadena, Cerritos, Long Beach and the College of the Canyons in Valencia.

Among the Los Angeles colleges, Southwest has suffered the worst decline. In 1981, it enrolled 8,000 students. This spring, it has about 3,600.

“We just hope we’ve bottomed out,” said Walter McIntosh, president of Southwest. The college was founded in 1967, partly as a response to the Watts riots, but the campus has not grown enough to compete with more developed colleges like El Camino.

“We desperately need some facilities,” McIntosh said, citing a vocational-technical center, a computer lab and a gymnasium. “There’s not a first-class gym in South-Central Los Angeles, and that can mean a lot for a college,” he said.

But the enrollment plunge has undercut attempts to expand, as college officials struggle to offer a full round of classes for students in programs like nursing, secretarial work and data processing.

McIntosh says he plans to “do a better job of getting the word out” about the college and is pinning his hopes for a new gym on surplus money from the 1984 Olympics.

There is an irony here. Though the Los Angeles colleges appear to be starved for money and lacking in facilities, state and local taxpayers pay far more if a student chooses a Los Angeles college rather than a suburban one.

State Pays About 80%

“It costs us about $540 more to send a kid to college in Los Angeles than in Santa Monica,” commented Chancellor Gerald Hayward of the California community colleges. Since Proposition 13, the state has paid about 80% of community college costs, but college costs are still higher in some districts than in others.

For example, the state will pay $2,599 for every student enrolled full-time in a Los Angeles community college, compared with $2,052 for a Santa Monica College student.

A student at El Camino will cost $2,132 this year, according to the chancellor’s office, $467 less than a Southwest student costs the state.

The financing disparity between Los Angeles and the suburban colleges will likely grow this year, Hayward said, since Gov. George Deukmejian’s budget includes $32 million in aid for districts that have suffered a severe enrollment drop. The Los Angeles district is expected to get $12 million of that money.

“The urban districts tend to have higher costs,” said Kenneth Washington, vice chancellor for education services in the Los Angeles district. “We have a higher percentage of students who need special help, and our salaries and fringe benefits probably cost more,” he said.

The cost-per-student also tends to rise, Washington said, when enrollment shrinks.

“If you have nine administrators on a campus and you lose 30% of your students, you’re still going to have to pay the cost of those administrators,” Washington said.

“The suburban colleges are not suffering the program losses and the money losses that we’ve had because of a nice influx of L.A. students.” he added.

L.A. Change of Policy

It was an influx that was partly brought about by the Los Angeles district. In February, 1983, the district sent a letter to officials of nearby colleges, informing them that it planned to “terminate its current interdistrict agreements,” which restricted students to a college in their home district. Instead, district officials said, they urged a free flow of students among community colleges.

Washington said the district believed this would cut the administrative cost of issuing cross-district transfer permits, while the flow of students among the colleges “would probably cancel itself out.”

Instead, about 27,000 Los Angeles district residents enrolled the next year in suburban colleges while only about 6,000 students transferred into the district to attend a Los Angeles college, a result that Washington called “a shock.”

On Aug. 16, 1984, just four days before the start of its fall term, Los Angeles college officials sent another letter to their suburban counterparts, this time informing them that they had found it “necessary to issue a notice of restriction” that would have forced Los Angeles residents to return to a district college.

But by then, the damage was done. Thousands of Los Angeles residents were then committed to attending a suburban college and were angered at the attempt. They were also petitioning the Legislature to approve a “free flow” of students among the two-year colleges.

Eddie Barba, El Camino’s student body president, organized a campus petition drive in favor of free flow. He began his college work at Harbor College in San Pedro, but after several of his required classes were cut, transferred to the college in Torrance.

Called Far Superior

He contends that El Camino is “far superior to Harbor, academically and aesthetically. I’ve had better professors and there’s a better atmosphere,” he said.

Herpel Haywood, another student body official, returned to academic life by enrolling at El Camino after working nine years, most of them in banking in Pasadena.

“I looked around, and this campus has more to offer. There’s more of an air of maturity here,” Haywood said. “If the L.A. colleges improve their curriculum and their programs, more students would want to go there,” he added.

The suburban college officials, irritated by the sudden shifts by the Los Angeles district, have also joined the lobbying effort to change state policy.

“We don’t want captive students,” said Santa Monica College President Richard Moore. “I think competition is healthy, for the colleges and for the students.” Alone among the local colleges, Santa Monica got the Legislature to enact a special provision that permits it to enroll the 10,000 Los Angeles residents.

The other colleges would like the same treatment.

“We’re talking about state taxpayers seeking access to state-funded institutions,” said Cortada, the El Camino president. “They are also paying $50 in tuition, and you can’t mandate where they spend their money.”

Los Angeles college officials have charged that much of the outflow from the district represents “white flight.” Southwest has a predominantly black student body, while El Camino has enrolled mostly Anglo students. But El Camino officials say that about one-third of the incoming Los Angeles students are Anglo.

Under pressure from the Los Angeles district, El Camino and the other suburban districts recently negotiated “interdistrict agreements” that will forbid new students from enrolling in more than one course outside their home district. Glendale College officials, saying they get many students from the Eagle Rock and Highland Park sections of Los Angeles, have so far refused to agree.)

Support for Suburban Schools

On March 8, the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges sided with the suburban colleges, voting to seek a statewide free-flow policy, except in cases where a college would “suffer irreparable damage” by a sudden outflow of students.

In practice, most community colleges around the state don’t try to restrict students from enrolling where they choose, and some, like the Orange County community colleges, have declared a free policy in the county.

“The board clearly favors a general policy of free flow,” said George David Kieffer, president of the state Board of Governors. Under legislation favored by the board, two districts could “mutually agree” to set a restriction.

Under current state law, one college district can “unilaterally restrict” cross-district attendance, Chancellor Hayward said.

Under the new proposal, a district like Los Angeles could not shut off transfers, but instead would have to appeal its case to the state Board of Governors.

“If they could demonstrate that free flow would threaten the viability of an institution, the board could approve a restriction,” Hayward explained. “It’s possible that unfettered free flow with El Camino might threaten the viability of Southwest College.”

State Legislation for Change

Two bills have been introduced calling for a statewide free-flow policy for community college students, and the state Board of Governors hopes to get its proposal amended to those bills.

Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles) has introduced a competing bill that would take the issue out of the Legislature and urge study of free flow by a new state commission.

“I have a real problem with not giving students freedom of choice, but I also have a problem with seeing the L.A. community college system devastated,” said Hughes, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. “We’re heading for a disaster. This free flow is all in one direction.

“We have to think what happens to the students who are left,” Hughes added. “I don’t want to see fine institutions threatened with being shut down while we sit on our hands.”