Colleges Will Add Classes to Increase Enrollment : Education: The Ventura County district will start a promotional campaign. Student ranks declined 12% on campuses this fall.

Scrambling to stem dwindling enrollment, Ventura County’s three community colleges are adding classes to their spring schedules and inaugurating a countywide promotional campaign to attract new students.

The promotional campaign aims to retain already-enrolled students and lure new ones. As part of the effort, officials have allotted the campuses money to replace canceled classes and add new ones.

In addition, college administrators can now add classes at the last minute when existing classes overflow because of heavy demand, said Larry Calderon, Oxnard College’s vice president of instruction.

Moorpark College will restore about 30 classes eliminated in last spring’s budget cuts and add 20 new ones. Ventura College will add about 20 classes, and Oxnard College will restore eight classes and add eight new ones. All the classes will be general education courses like English, math, history and philosophy, district administrators said.

Altogether, the district will spend $125,000 to restore and add classes.

The district has seen its enrollment drop 12% this fall in the face of rising student fees, a widely publicized reduction of 300 classes districtwide, and a poor economy that made higher education unaffordable for some potential students.

State aid has not declined, however, because enrollment remains above the level set for full funding. That’s why the district finds itself with extra money to spend on adding classes.

If enrollment continues to decline, however, the district could forfeit up to $1 million out of its $62.7 million budget.

Jeff Marsee, vice chancellor of administrative services, said the district plans to respond with the countywide promotional blitz. The district’s new slogan--”Design your future, don’t just dream about it”--will pop up in movie theater screens, on buttons, in radio announcements and in newspaper advertisements.

The colleges have been encouraged to mail out catalogues to all residences in surrounding neighborhoods, a longtime practice dropped as part of last spring’s budget cuts, Calderon said.

The district announced last May that it would cut a total of 300 classes from the 1993-94 summer, fall and spring terms. That cut was based on a projected enrollment drop of 5%, as student fees climbed from $6 per unit to $13 per unit, Marsee said.

Instead, the campuses lost more than twice that many students.

College officials worry that the $7-per-unit fee increase, combined with the $50-per-unit fee that students with bachelor’s degrees now must pay to attend community colleges, put the schools beyond the reach of many low-income students.

“The fees were really, really hurtful,” said Darlene Pacheco, Moorpark College’s vice president of instruction. “If you consider what the Legislature did here (in raising fees), it’s just unconscionable.”

Last year, when there was still a cap on the amount of fees a student could pay, even a full, 15-unit load of classes cost only $60, Pacheco said. Now, that same class load costs $195.

Added Oxnard College’s Calderon: “It’s a really scary situation that the people most in need of education are the ones that cannot afford to avail themselves of it.”