State budget woes have SRJC students looking at out-of-state colleges

<p>Throngs of Santa Rosa Junior College students lined up Wednesday at tables adorned with satin covers affixed with university seals of schools from San Diego to Reno for the JC's annual transfer day.</p><p>The annual event drew more than 50 schools whose representatives passed out pamphlets and gave pep talks about their schools, despite increasing student fees and tighter enrollment at the California State and University of California systems.</p><p>The landscape of higher education in California is changing, meaning students need to be disciplined in picking the right path out of the junior college and into a four-year school, said junior college counselor Roberta Delgado.</p><p>Preparation is key, she said.</p><p>“Remain (at the JC) until you are fully prepared,” she said. “Because if you have all of your coursework done and your GPA, you are more likely to be admitted to those schools.”</p><p>But getting in is only half the battle.</p><p>The University of California is considering increasing fees 32 percent over two years in addition to the 9 percent hike approved in May. </p><p>The university also is proposing to cut freshman enrollment by an additional 2,300 students, or 7 percent. That would follow a similar enrollment cut that brought the size of this fall's entering class to about 35,300 freshmen.</p><p>CSU fees went up 30 percent this fall and that system plans to cut its 250,000 enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years, including 450 at Sonoma State University.</p><p>Those hits are having an impact on independent and out of state schools, officials said at the JC event Wednesday.</p><p>The University of Arizona in Tucson welcomed its largest class of freshman this fall at 7,000 students — approximately 1,150 of them who are from California, according to Naomi Schoenholz, a west coast recruiter for the school.</p><p>That's about a 10 percent increase in the number of Californians who became Wildcats five years ago, said Schoenholz.</p><p>The University of Arizona costs about $32,000 a year for out-of-state students, compared with about $26,000 annually for tuition, room and board at UC Davis.</p><p>But many students and parents express worry about paying for not four, but five or six years of college because cuts to class offerings have stretched students' stays in academia, Schoenholz said.</p><p>“It's going to take them six years because they can't get the classes they need,” she said. </p><p>Sophomore Kevin Marti said he is seriously considering leaving California for his remaining years of college both because of the budget cuts to education but also because the state is “kind of spiraling downhill lately — the budget issues have been poorly managed.”</p><p>“It seems like education is the only thing we should be putting money into and we are taking it out — but I'm a student,” he said.</p><p>Enrollment restrictions as a result of budget cuts affect nearly all college campuses, said Susan J. Schnars, community outreach coordinator for Chapman University's Fairfield campus.</p><p>“People who can't get into state schools come back to the JCs and the JCs start bulging at the seams,” she said. “We have space.”</p><p>Out-of-state campuses typically gain favor when space is tight and costs are high in the CSU and UC systems, Delgado said.</p><p>“We saw that happened in 2004, going out of state rather than take a second choice UC,” she said.</p>