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Online Community College Proposal Receives Negative Feedback From Current Schools

A new online community college proposal is causing an uproar amongst faculty who work for the California community college system, including at College of the Canyons.


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The new online community college proposed by Governor Jerry Brown earlier this year is set to cost $120 million to kickstart.

Brown said the online college is set to reach millions of Californians who have no college degree but who could benefit from one or a few classes of skills and job training.

College of the Canyons offer several different online classes to Santa Clarita Valley residents and the number of online classes have increased over the last four years, said Eric Harnish, a spokesperson for COC.

“Here at College of the Canyons, online and hybrid (online classes with some in-person meetings) sections comprised 17 percent of the college’s offerings and 13 percent of the full-time equivalent students in fall  of 2016,” said Harnish. “Since 2010, 100 percent of online sections have increased 185 percent. More than 200 hybrid and online courses were offered by almost 40 departments in the fall of 2016.”

Staff at COC are unsure if students participating in the purely online program would be able to receive help in the same way Santa Clarita college students can.

“We find that many online students use support services on the campus, such as free tutoring in the TLC,” Harnish said. “If the online college is fully online, where will students go when they need help? Why  spend the time and money to launch an unproven initiative when that money could be invested with local colleges that are already serving their local students with online classes?”

Faculty members at Glendale Community College have started a petition in an effort to stop the online community college from continuing.

“The petition basically states that the faculty at Glendale are opposed to the creation of a fully online community college as it’s currently envisioned,” said Glendale Community College faculty union President Roger Bowerman.

Over 200 faculty members from Glendale Community College signed the petition.

The union president believes the $120 million set aside by Governor Brown in next year’s budget could be used in other ways that would be more beneficial to students and college faculty.

Bowerman would like to see this money going toward helping the system’s 114 campuses create jobs and skills classes for adult learners.

“Give us $5 million of that to create fully online, mini-certificates and we’ll have it in place in six months,” he said.

Legislators are scheduled to meet in the next few weeks to discuss the budget for the online college.

Brown hopes to have the new online community college open for the fall of 2019, if approved.

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Online Community College Proposal Receives Negative Feedback From Current Schools

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About Louie Diaz

Louie was born and raised in Santa Clarita. At the age of two Louie lost his vision due to a brain tumor. However, Louie doesn't let blindness stop him from doing what ever it is he wants to accomplish. Growing up some of his favorite hobbies were wood working, fishing and riding bikes. Louie graduated from College of the Canyon in December of 2017, with a Broadcast Journalism degree. Growing up Louie has always wanted to be a fire fighter or a police officer, but because of his blindness Louie knew that wouldn't work. Louie has always loved listening to police and fire radio traffic, using a scanner, and he figured if he was going to listen to the scanner so much, he should do something with it.