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It was recently announced that many state-funded universities in California were eliminating or reducing summer sessions due to budget cutbacks. This news comes on the eve of California lawmakers finally passing a budget plan in the state senate that would help modify the California’s debt problems. While this plan may help with the state's deficit, it puts thousands of students in trouble.
Summer school has traditionally been a time for students to either gain headway with their degrees or to stay on track with their programs because of unforeseen circumstances during the regular academic year. But now due to the budget plan, some schools like West Los Angeles College are not offering summer courses at all while other schools such as Cal Poly Pomona are increasing summer tuition fees and offering fewer classes. It is also being reported that many state universities as well as several California community colleges will offer less for-credit courses while still maintaining and offering specialized training courses and not-for-credit classes for students during the summer.
So what does this mean for students? Not only will they have to pay more per unit for summer courses than if they were taking them during the traditional academic period but the available summer classes will be not-for-credit and the for-credit classes will be extremely difficult and expensive to register for. So with the already overcrowded state schools raising the tuition fees earlier this year, these new cuts will further delay a student's ability to graduate on time.
Jacquelene Bennett is a rising senior at the University of Redlands where her areas of study are creative writing, government and religious studies. When she is not studying or working, you can usually find her eating frozen yogurt or blogging about her day. She has a cactus named Kat and believes that Stephen Colbert is a genius. Jacquelene works hard, laughs hard and knows that one day you’ll see her name in lights.