Community college tuition may drop to $15 per unit if Proposition 92 passes in February.

The proposition, initially called the California Community College Initiative, will be on the ballot for the next statewide election on Feb. 5.

Student Benefits

“Students should know that Prop. 92 will stabilize their funding,” Elizabeth Shadish, philosophy professor, said. “The money will go to them in one form or another.”

Prop. 92 will benefit California community colleges in three ways.

“First, it will lower tuition fees to $15 per unit, making community college education much more affordable for students, and that is what community colleges are all about,” Sean Donnell, president of the EC Federation of Teachers, said.

According to the Californians for Community College website, a proponent of the proposition, 305,000 fewer students enrolled in community colleges when the fees were raised to $26 per unit.

Prop. 92 will stabilize fees and ensure that they will only rise with the cost of living.

College benefits

The second monetary benefit of Prop. 92 is that it will guarantee a minimum amount of funding for growth.

“The way it stands right now, our funding is tied to a formula that rests on student population in K-12,” Shadish said. “Theirs is on the decline now, whereas our population is increasing, and yet the formula is going to make our funding go down.”

Elementary schools, middle schools and high schools are funded based on the number of students enrolled, in addition to their attendance.

Community college money is lumped in with funding for K-12 schools.

“Community colleges service more students than any other institution of higher learning in California,” Donnell said. “The proposition would create a separate pool of money for us, thereby guaranteeing adequate funding.”

Shadish explains it even further.

“We’re trying to set it up so that our funding is based on our enrollment as it actually is, which means that if our enrollment goes down, so will our funding, but it will be our enrollment going down, and we, in theory, won’t need as much money, because we won’t have as many bodies,” she said.

The final guarantee of Prop. 92 is a political one.

“Prop. 92 will also guarantee that our own Board of Governors will make main decisions. Right now, even though we’re decentralized, certain types of decisions do come down from the State Chancellor’s office,” Shadish said. “It’s the same issue as say, the LAUSD, where parents want to say that the system is too massive now and one size doesn’t fit all.”

Opposition

There are some worries that Prop. 92 will take money away from the K-12 system.

“Most opponents of Prop. 92 are afraid of it possibly cutting money from K-12 funding, which is unwarranted because it only separates our funding,” Donnell said.

Funding for both K-12 schools and community colleges comes from California’s general fund.

“To the money issue, for every dollar that we invest in community college students, we get $3 back in terms of the contributions that those students can make, their salaries, and the taxes that are higher because their wages are higher,” Shadish said.

“The mission of community colleges is to get the students here, get them educated and then give them to the world,” she said. “Prop. 92 will just help us do that better.”