Community colleges are, for many students, a stepping-stone to a wider world. For those professions in which an associate’s degree is the needed one that prepares them for their professional lives. For those students who are destined to move onto more advanced degrees it is a stepping-stone to universities that allows students to take on college level work without paying the four-year college rate. This option allows many students who may not have been able to afford a university education to get a head start with two years fewer of debt, it may also give students the ability to prove themselves academically, making them more likely to obtain scholarships or other fiscal inducements from four year schools.

In Ventura County, California, not one, but three community colleges are being forced to make cuts that will impact their programs. The colleges in question are Moorpark, Oxnard and Ventura and between these three the colleges are expected to cut about 60 jobs. The cuts will impact primarily  support staff, such as clerks and lab technicians, and one dean.

The school will also implement other cost saving measure, such as closing cafeterias, reducing book store hours of operation and asking some remaining workers to take cuts to their hours in order to make up for an operational deficit. In addition the school plans on closing programs and cutting back on the classes offered in order to make ends meet. The school blames the deficit on a decreased number of full time students and less funding from the government. For the time being there is no set number of how many workers will be cut from each individual campus or which campus will be losing a dean in the process, but these kinds of overall cuts, designed to close a multi-million dollar budget hole, will no doubt be felt by the students.

Of course other schools are making much more sever cuts to stay afloat. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage here is a look at some of the fairly large job cuts being made to the workers at the University of Washington:

“The town of Pullman, Washington is like a lot of other university towns. It is a center for local culture, it has an active nightlife and the areas local economy can be profoundly influenced by the budget of the college that surrounds it. For those of you who are not from the area, Pullman is the town that is intimately linked to Washington State University. The two are so close that the schools mascot (a cougar) adorns the city’s bridge on each end, and the signs that show you the town limits also do double duty as signs for the school.

It should be no surprise that the college is the largest single employer in the town. As the state is cutting its budget in order to remain solvent the university will not be getting as much funding as they have in prior years. In order to cope with this loss the University of Washington is cutting down on its budget and those changes are already showing an impact on the economy, making local business owners nervous.”