NY Times profiles class cuts at San Francisco State University

[alp227]

Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Published: January 23, 2010

At 2:29 p.m. on Jan. 12, Juan Macias, 19, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, sat in a cafe near the engineering firm where he works part time as an office assistant, staring at a laptop computer screen.

In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. "This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun.

Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses — then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period.

"You’re trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education," said Mr. Macias, a business major. "It really makes me angry." His classes — the ones that had an opening — begin on Monday.

Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias’s experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/education/24sfstudent.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

I go to San Jose State University and have heard many similar stories from many students here too.

[jemsan]

1. Same thing at UC Berkeley

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. This is what enrollment was like for me as a baby boomer

There were just so many of us. We would sleep all night in the hall outside the registrar's office so we could be first in line and get the classes we needed.