Research Paper

Submitted By bgehrts
Words: 390
Pages: 2

American River College 4700 College Oak Dr Sacramento,CA 95841

American River College Students and Parents:

As you may know, the State of California has fallen on tough economic times and American River College is no exception to the current financial climate. Despite the increasing demand for education at community colleges, state funding continues to trend downward. Nationally state funding dropped approximately $1,000 per community college student in 2010, a 15 percent decline from the year before. The community college system in California has been subject to $1.5 billion in budget cuts since 2007.

The impact of budget cuts has been particularly extreme in our state of California, where massive budget cuts have resulted in a significant decline in both course offerings and enrollment. Course offerings are at a 15-year low and enrollment at a 20-year low. Enrollment has been declining from a peak of 1.79 million students in 2008.

American River College has done everything we can to absorb these massive cuts in a way that protects the quality of our students' educational experience — reducing cost, increasing efficiency and raising revenue whenever possible from other sources. Through these measures, many of which involve significant sacrifice for our faculty and staff, we were able to address nearly three-quarters of the financial shortfall. In the end, however, faced with enormous cuts and the possibility that further reductions would lead to unrecoverable losses in quality, we have been forced to turn to students and their families for the remaining revenue.

In response to the fiscal deficit, for the year of