Low turn out in the number of students enrolled at Cerritos continues to concern the Board of Trustees.

William Farmer Jr., vice president of student academic affairs, addressed declining student enrollment last Wednesday at the meeting, citing the possible root causes of it, but some Cerritos students have reasoning of their own as the Board continues to look for solutions.

“I think that they should lower the student’s fee,” Susanna Maran, art major said, “Because it is not fair to the students who can’t afford it.”

Student enrollment has been in a steady decline since the 2002-03 fiscal years according to Farmer.

“At the beginning of the fall semester in 2002 enrollment was at 25, 689,” he said, “and as of the spring semester enrollment is at an estimated 23,000 students.”

During the summer session, enrollment has also been low, dropping from 18,416 students in 2002 to 17,221 students ending the summer of 2005, Farmer added.

Farmer added that he has looked at other community colleges and most notably Mt. SAC has had a decline in its enrollment.

He noted that, “Fifty of 72 colleges have not met their enrollment target.”

Farmer also believes that there have been numerous problems, which have led to the decline two of which are an increase in the employment opportunities and tuition has gone from $11 per unit in 2003 to $26 per unit in 2004.

“As with the tuition, it seems small in the amount (of impact),” he said, “but it has led to Cerritos College having tougher enrollment procedures.”

The challenges have been getting tough on students on academic probation and prerequisite checking, Farmer concluded.

However the rise of tuition remains on the minds of those currently enrolled.

Maran believes that the student fees are not fair because students who can’t afford to pay for college would have to work “two or three jobs.”

Jeobanni Rodriguez, music major, said that it seems like a drastic change to have higher fees.

As far as the change in enrollment procedures such as the implementation of PeopleSoft, “Online is easier for me,” he said, “and I’ve had no problem, but I pay for my classes in cash.”

Finding a solution to the problems may be tougher than narrowing down the causes.

Board Member Carmen Avalos wanted to know what was being done to raise the declining enrollment numbers.

Shirley Arceo, coordinator of school relations, said that there has been an effort to reach students through advertisement in radio and bus advertisement as well.

“Radio stations such as Power 106, KIIS-FM, and KROQ have been running advertisements to get students to enroll,” Arceo said.

“More importantly however, what about the Spanish audience,” Avalos said, “Because (the students) listen to (Spanish) stations.”

“We have tried to run the Cerritos College ads on Radio 93.6,” Arceo replied, “and the reason for that is because the target audience is between 18-34 years old.”

Board Member Bob Epple also questioned the outreach of the community to (bilingual) students.

Arceo pointed out that she has tried to reach out to other cities but “the Cerritos Mall, and Lakewood Mall representatives do not allow booths for community colleges to be there.”

Farmer said that there have been efforts to improve enrollment such as having volunteers and fixing the glitches of the PeopleSoft system.