Year-Round Classes for Colleges Urged

Saying that California’s public colleges and universities will soon “run out of room,” the legislative analyst’s office recommends that all campuses move to year-round operations to squeeze in more students.

The recommendation is remarkable given that the legislative analyst has been the most vocal critic of projections that California’s colleges will be swamped by a tidal wave of half a million extra students by 2005.

Even after adjusting the numbers downward, the analysts reached the same conclusion that worries higher education leaders: State colleges and universities will soon be overrun as the children of baby boomers come of age.

“By going year-round, the state could serve up to one-third more students in existing instructional facilities and save several billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on additional buildings,” the legislative analyst concluded in a report issued Friday.

The legislative analyst, an independent office set up to advise legislators on policy matters, suggests that the Legislature not try to micromanage the shift to year-round classes from the traditional nine-month academic calendar.

Instead, the office, known for its penny-pinching, recommends that the Legislature start choking off construction funds to force the nine-campus University of California, the 22-campus California State University and the state’s 106 community colleges to make the switch on their own.

That strategy, of course, did not sit well with higher education leaders. They note that the vast majority of construction funding is used to renovate aging buildings or to fortify them against earthquakes.

Other than that, Cal State Executive Vice Chancellor Richard West said, he finds little to quarrel about in the report.

“Our chancellor wants to go to year-round operations,” West said. Cal State officials are working with lawmakers in Sacramento to move in that direction.

Gov. Gray Davis supports year-round classes. The Legislature is now considering a bill that would extend state subsidies to summer school so that summer classes no longer cost substantially more than those offered during the traditional school year.

“The biggest challenge,” West said, “is getting students to take courses during the summer.”

Students have long cherished the traditional summer break--for fun, for travel or for full-time jobs to help pay for college.

Yet the legislative analyst suggested that many students would take advantage of year-round classes to complete their degrees more quickly.

The true interest in year-round classes has not been measured, the report said, because summer sessions do not offer a wide range of courses, the classes are usually more crowded and more often taught by part-time instructors instead of full-time faculty.

And then there’s the difference in costs. At UC campuses, summer classes cost 15% more than regular sessions, and at most Cal State campuses the price is at least twice as much.

The exceptions are Cal State L.A., Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Hayward, which are funded for year-round operations. The number of students attending summer classes is still far below the figure for regular sessions--only about 29% on average.

UCLA and UC Berkeley operated year-round in the late 1960s as part of a strategy for accommodating the last tidal wave of students when the baby boomers were flooding through college gates. The UC summer program was discontinued in 1970.

Reviving the summer program, the report suggests, could have the added benefit of admitting more students to UCLA and Berkeley, relieving some of the pressure in the intense competition for limited seats.

“That’s an interesting suggestion,” said Larry Hershman, UC’s vice president for budget. “We’ve asked both Berkeley and UCLA to take a look at it.”

Reviewing their projections, UC officials realized that enrollment is growing faster than they previously thought.

“We are looking at options to handle this huge increase in students, and one of those is more extensive use of summer school,” Hershman said.

The report assumes that summer classes would be as full as those in the fall or spring. But Hershman is not so sure that is possible. He wants to make sure the university does not get suckered into summer programs that would cost far more per student if added classes do not attract enough students.

There are other obstacles too. Faculty members often rely on summer breaks to do much of their research. Most universities lease out buildings to conferences and other paying customers during the summer. These moneymaking ventures--renting dorm rooms, for instance--often subsidize housing costs for students during the rest of the year.

In addition, year-round instruction would require changes in state and federal financial aid. Most aid packages limit students to nine months of classes a year or cannot be used for summer school.

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Full-Time Colleges

State officals are considering a switch from the nine-month academic year to year-round classes to make room for a tidal wave of students expected to flood college campuses in the next few years. Below are past and projected enrollments in the state’s higher education system.

Source: Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, California Post Secondary Education Commission