Pierce Students Wait to Find Classes Full

Budget cuts, a failed experiment and an unexpected crush of new students made summer-school registration at Pierce College in Woodland Hills a long and difficult process Wednesday.

Students complained of waiting four to five hours or more to sign up for summer classes scheduled to begin on July 1.

And, once they got to the desk to register, they found most classes already filled. Most students who went through the process Wednesday were placed on waiting lists.

“When the doors opened this morning, 55% of the classes were already filled. By 3 p.m., 95% of them were filled,” said Carlos Boado, a Pierce student who had volunteered to help with registration. “After a four-hour wait, getting put on a waiting list isn’t as rewarding as getting into a class.”

Said Yvette Jordan of Studio City: “I’ve been here 3 1/2 hours. Nobody expected to be in line this long. This is ridiculous.”

Administrators said they were sorry that the wait was so long and blamed it on a lack of money for registrars, the many new students and the school’s failure to stagger registration times.

“This year registration brought us good news and bad news,” said William Norlund, vice president of administration who is acting president while Pierce President David Wolf is on vacation.

“The good news is that enrollment may be going back up again. The bad news is that all these students caught us unprepared.”

Budget cuts by the Los Angeles Community College District, the nine-campus system that includes Pierce, have cut the school’s clerical staff to the bone. This year only 10 people manned registration tables, fewer than in the past, Norlund said.

Last summer, 3,166 students attended Pierce summer session. This year, there could be more than 5,000 on the Woodland Hills campus, Norlund said. He said about 3,000 current Pierce students have pre-registered for summer classes and that 2,220 students who have never attended Pierce have applied.

No one anticipated such a dramatic summer enrollment jump, he said.

The turnout meant that there were not enough classes to meet the demand, Norlund said. Three English, math and history classes were added to the schedule Wednesday, and more will be added by July 1, he said.

Norlund also blamed Wednesday’s long waits on the fact that, for the first time in several years, students were not given registration appointments.

“We tried an experiment that obviously failed,” he said. “We were unable to send student reservation times because we did not have the money for postage. We thought we didn’t need reservations for new students. We were wrong.”

Declining enrollment in the Los Angeles Community College District, combined with reduced state funding, have precipitated a financial crisis. For the first time in its history, the district had to lay off tenured teachers.

Districtwide, about 50 clerical workers have been dismissed, several vocational programs have been eliminated and about 100 instructors who taught in “low-demand” fields have been transferred to other disciplines.

“People just don’t understand that when they voted to limit property taxes that supported public education, that budget cuts would filter down to the students,” said Jeff Cohen, a counselor at Pierce. “Until two years ago, only the staff felt the cuts. Now the impact is starting to be felt by the students.”