Maintain Accreditation

By Thomas Patrick Moyer

CCSF needs to maintain its accreditation by restoring its fiscal credibility.

If City College loses this designation, students will no longer be able to transfer credits to four-year institutions or receive student loans. It would be disastrous to the city, its residents, local businesses and to those who depend on CCSF as the only access to higher education.

To date, CCSF has received funding from Prop. A, Prop. 30 as well as funding from Sacramento in the form of AB 860, but these are only temporary fixes. To maintain the accreditation for the long term, I propose the Board of Trustees do the following:

1) Complete Operational Audit - We need to look at how money is being invested in the school's infrastructure, students and overall operations to identify inefficiencies.

2) Align Class Offerings with Demand- In the past, class offerings have been based on "political" decisions and not based on demand. To date, 70% of student do not graduate on time and much of that is due to the lack of availability of core classes they need to graduate. Furthermore, we need make sure the classes that are being offered have enough students to support that class. Too frequently, we see under-enrolled classes that cannot be fiscally supported.

3) Rent Unused Space for Additional Revenues - CCSF have lost an estimated 30k-40k students, which translates to millions in lost tuition fees. Secondly, the lower enrollment numbers leave many classrooms vacant and unused that are housed in buildings that still need to be maintained. For this reason, we need to take an aggressive approach in monetizing this space.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Furthermore, if we elect the same people who put CCSF in its current position, we will likely get a similar result.