I started my first day of the course today.  I actually have to "crash" since I was waitlisted when I signed up for the course.  I'm number 1 on the waitlist so hopefully that helps.  This isn't about that though, this is about the beginning California's institutions of higher education's ruin.

 What we have here is a situation where a number of factors are coming together to put an extremely heavy burden on colleges and community colleges in California.

The first factor: Budget.  We all know California isn't doing too hot now in terms of our budget.  This means there will be cuts in parts of the budget that somebody deemed "less important".  Instead of continually feeding money into institutions that help people become educated so that they can make a living and pay taxes, they cut out classes, teachers, and entire programs altogether.  This puts the first strain on the schools.

The second factor: Now that the budget has been cut at the senior college/university,they must cut courses, and full on programs.  But guess what...they don't change the requirements needed to graduate with a degree that includes those programs.  For example, they cut out the Art 100 series of classes from UCSD but they still require them to graduate with an art degree.  Well guess where those students are going to go to pick these courses up...the already student-saturated community college district which has ALREADY taken a budget hit

The third factor: High unemployment rate.  You have a lot of people unemployed and deciding that now would be a good time to modify their own life path.  Herds of the unemployed have decided to hit the books once again.  To which I say: "well done", however our system is running out of resources.

So this is why when I signed up on the first day that was scheduled to me, within the first hour that I was allowed to sign up, I was immediately tossed onto 3rd on the wait list.  Usually, after a couple of months, one that was #10 on the waiting queue would get their chance to enroll.  These days, I moved 2 spots in just as many months.