A Place for Dropouts When They’re Older and Wiser : Community colleges: They teach otherwise lost souls a trade or profession and allow many to pursue a four-year degree.

The Los Angeles Community College District is growing at the rate of about 5% a year, and this fall enrollment is 10% above last year at this time. Unfortunately, because of budget restraints, the state will only reimburse us for about 2% of those students. We have tried not to turn away students, and, by law, we are not supposed to.

The first obligation of community colleges and their faculties is to the success of the students. The subjects being taught and their content are interchangeable with courses at four-year institutions, but most important, our teachers’ priority is teaching. Our students are taught by senior faculty, most of whom are tenured. They provide their students with considerable attention and individualized instruction. (At some four-year institutions, faculty members devote a great deal more time to research than to their students.)

Everyone is not destined for a degree and a job behind a desk. We offer 96 vocational-technical programs that ensure highly skilled personnel for business upon completion of training.

Los Angeles Trade-Technical College is the largest and most unique vocational college in the country, offering training programs in such areas as manufacturing, information technology, computerized apparel design and health-care professions.

Harbor College is the regional trainer for Hyundai Auto Co., and West Los Angeles College has a Hazardous Materials Technology program that is gaining a national reputation. The Los Angeles Community Colleges also assist the hundreds of thousands of amnesty applicants needing English, reading and other basic skills required by federal law.

At present, 40% of the high school population drops out. However, these are not all lost souls. By the time they reach age 27, many have returned to school--most to a community college, and 85% to 90% of those who return complete their general equivalency degree (GED) and become skilled in a trade or profession or pursue a four-year degree.

You might say that we are the “drop-in” schools of America. What are drop-in students all about? My background as a black male is typical of those attending urban community colleges.

I grew up in a single-parent home. My mother raised three sons alone. She refused to accept welfare, so we lived in my grandparents’ home while she worked as a domestic throughout our childhood. While we were loved and cared for, there was very little for us to look forward to in terms of upward mobility.

Because of my mother’s pleading, I remained in high school, but I believed it to be a waste of time. I was making as much money as my mother working as a locker-room boy at a private golf course. Staying in school made no sense. I was repeatedly told by my teachers and counselors that I was not college material and that I was a big kid who should go out and find a steady job.

After two years in the Army after the Korean War, by then married and a father with three dependents, I still did not see college as a viable option. It was not until I realized I had the GI Bill that I decided I might be able to succeed in an academic setting. However, at 26, before I could be accepted by a four-year university, I had to return to community college to learn how to study, and to make up high school deficiencies. Somehow, going a day at a time, I made it.

My story is as common as the 122,000 students we serve in the Los Angeles Community College District. I can think of no better way to ensure ourselves a safe, healthy and free society than by investing whatever the monetary costs required to educate and train all who live among us. In this community college district last year, there were 80,000 individuals who we could not serve. That number happens to be equal to the number of gang members in this community.

The students we serve want to improve their lives, and by so doing they automatically improve the lives and safety of each of us.