Scramble for classes begins

Marisa O’Neil

As soon as Billy Pittman mentioned he was dropping three classes,

21-year-old Casey Hott’s ears perked up.

The two Orange Coast College students stood side by side

Wednesday, the third day of fall semester, settling their schedules

on the telephone registration system in the admissions office. Hott

was desperately trying to add a class when she overheard 20-year-old

Pittman say he was dropping his classes because his Marine Corps unit

is being deployed to Iraq.

“Any chemistry classes?” she asked hopefully, then gave out a

laugh. “Wow. I sound like a vulture.”

This semester, OCC is offering almost 5% more classes than it did

last fall, when budget cuts forced officials to cut 22.2% of classes.

Enrollment, however, is up 3.4% over last year, so many students like

Hott are still scrambling to get the classes they need to graduate.

“There’s still a big crunch,” Dean of Admissions Nancy Kidder

said. “Even though we added 90 sections, we had a 10% increase in

applications. Demand is still exceeding our supply by quite a bit.”

And the students who do get the classes they want face higher

tuition. State-mandated fees went up to $26 per unit this semester,

up from $18 last year and $11 per unit the year before.

Student Robert Walchli signed up and paid for four classes, then

got a bill for an additional $64, he said. He plans to drop two of

the classes, which he takes for his own personal enrichment, not to

transfer to a university.

“That’s the $64 that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

But even with the increased cost -- to nearly $400 per semester

for a full-time student -- students are still coming to OCC, Kidder

said. Thanks to the baby boomlet -- baby boomers’ children and

grandchildren -- more young students and recent high school graduates

are enrolling, she said.

The state’s budget troubles have added to the crunch, giving

community colleges less money for classes and a few more students,

redirected from the California State and University of California

systems because of reduced enrollments there.

OCC’s first week of classes always brings jammed parking lots,

lost freshmen and hordes of students hoping to add classes at the

last minute. In fact, one class this week had more students trying to

add the class than were enrolled in it.

“It doesn’t seem quite as chaotic as it was last year, but

instructors are still getting lots of petitioners,” OCC spokesman Jim

Carnett said. “They’re trying to accommodate as many students as

possible.”

The omnipresent long lines of students so common in the past are

gone.

Since the college came up with a new system last year that allows

instructors to give students an access code to register, they can

add, drop or do about anything by phone, Carnett said. That

eliminated the sometimes two- to three-hour wait students previously

faced to do the same thing.

Lines in the campus bookstore Wednesday morning looked more

manageable than past years, as well. Jordan Baker, 19, said he waited

only about 15 minutes to buy his textbooks.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “It’s definitely better than last

year.”