monitor
ohlone college
ohlonemonitor.com
Vol. XLV No. 7
#ocmonitor
Fremont, California
April 18, 2013
OSTON MARATHON TRAGEDY “evokes strength, selflessness, compassion”
See story page 8
TAM DUONG / MONITOR
Ohlone ranked as premier community college By FRANKIE ADDIEGO Staff writer
The Ohlone College Board of Trustees stopped to remember the man who gave the college its name. Filipe “Phil” Galvan suggested the name in the mid-1960s in honor of his ancestors’ tribe when the college was in its infancy. The focus of the meeting,
however, was on reports. Mike Bowman, dean of Institutional Research, presented data showing that Ohlone was ahead of the state average in a number of key areas in a study by Accountability Reporting for the Community Colleges. “When you look at this report,” he said, “it continues to say that Ohlone is one of the premier community colleges.”
According to Bowman’s report, Ohlone is received 60 percent in performance, where the statewide average is 44 percent. Improvement rates for remedial English courses are at 48.6 percent , while improvement rates for remedial math courses are 50.9 percent, both of which are well over the state averages of 38 percent and 37 per-
cent respectively. However, Ohlone is behind in some areas, such as improvement rates for ESL courses at 17.7 percent, which is far behind the state’s average of 38.9 percent. Ohlone’s Vice President of Academic Services Ron Little discussed the contract with Verde Design to construct three academic sport fields:
one for baseball, one for soccer and one for softball. The project will cost $6 million, which will come from funds created by Measure G. The college leases the land to the builder during construction. The meeting ended on a sour note with the expulsion of student Theodore Domingo, who was accused of cheating and plagiarism.
Planning website. However, even Ohlone was hit, seeing a drop in full-time enrollment during this time period. “Our full-time equivalent student enrollment is up,” said Michael Bowman, the Dean of Admissions and Records and institutional Research and Planning. Full-time equivalent students are calculated by multiplying the number of students enrolled in a class by the number of contact hours the class has during the semester and then dividing by 525, according to the research and planning website. The number of contact
hours a full-time student would have is 525 in an academic year. The cuts statewide resulted in fewer instructors at colleges and a decrease in academic year course offerings by 21 percent. Summer course offerings fell 60 percent during these years. First-time student enrollment declined 5 percent, while the number of California high school graduates increased by 9 percent in this same time period. The institute research fellow and co-author of the report Sarah Bohn discussed some of the report’s findings.
“The decline in access of first-time students is troubling, given California’s longstanding need to increase college-going rates for new high school graduates, who are the workforce for the future,” she said. Community colleges are the largest system of higher education in the nation. The report is compiled from official community college reports and a survey of more than 100 senior administrators throughout the system in fall 2012. Schools, including Ohlone College, have had to adapt to the monetary restraints and implement new budget plans.
“Setting enrollment priorities makes sense, especially because community colleges have been criticized for their students’ low completion rates,” Bohn said. “As the system’s fiscal outlook improves, it’s important for policymakers to weigh the colleges’ multiple missions and their ability to achieve them.” The passage of Proposition 30 has ensured that the state budget for education will increase, possibly as early as fiscal year 2013-2014. However, while the report finds that this will help, it will also be difficult to overcome the years of cuts.
State data suggests dropping enrollment By LOUIS LAVENTURE News editor
Full-time enrollment at California community colleges has dropped to a 20-year low, according to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California. The institute report finds that the California community college system has suffered from $1.5 billion in funding cuts from 2007-2008 to 2011-2012. Ohlone has an annual headcount enrollment of around 17,000 students, according to the analytical summary of the environmental scan on the offical Research and