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The Student News Site of San Francisco State University

Golden Gate Xpress

The Student News Site of San Francisco State University

Golden Gate Xpress

Xpress staff weighs in on the CCSF accreditation crisis

Cartoon by Kirstie Haruta / Special to Xpress

Cartoon by Kirstie Haruta

With a little more than an academic year left for City College of San Francisco, its accreditation — along with its state funding — will likely be revoked, leading to the closure of the nearly 80-year-old campus.

In a recent op-ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the idea was presented to merge CCSF and SF State into a single campus. The article argued that CCSF’s survival could be secured by being adopted by a financially healthier campus and pointed out SF State’s history of healthily dealing with its own set of funding issues.

Solving complex issues involves breaking them down into smaller solvable pieces and dealing with each of those smaller pieces with the attention each piece deserves. While merging the two campuses into a giant one seems like a quick answer at a glance, that solution does not solve the smaller issues contributing to the reasons that CCSF lost its accreditation.

In a published response in the Chronicle, SF State President Leslie E. Wong pointed out that one of the biggest problems with combining both campuses is that “state statute, maintains a distinction between community colleges and state universities, resulting in distinct authority, structures, funding and governance.”

Definitions and legislative issues aside, merging both schools potentially could create more problems than it would solve.

In the business world, it is difficult to absorb a company beset by financial and organizational woes and splice up the valuable assets of the weaker company that would benefit the stronger. The difference with CCSF and SF State is that they are educational institutions, and unlike companies, cannot be broken up for their valuable assets; each department has a need to fulfill, and is required for the success of the school as a whole.

Ultimately, CCSF has a distinction as a community college, not a university. Its role in the college world, to provide general education and an alternative to the ever-expensive costs of university-taught classes, is as important as ever.

San Francisco needs a community college and CCSF has fulfilled that need for thousands of students for many decades. In the heavily populated urban environment that San Francisco is, having an institution that can openly admit tens of thousands of students — regardless of high school grades, and at substantially lower costs than a university — is a must.

Preserving CCSF as a community college and making it stronger should be the goal in the next year of hardship it faces.

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  • R

    rws450Aug 28, 2013 at 3:38 pm

    I suggest the writer and SFSU community to get much more informed on what’s really going down at CCSF, the Accreditation Commission, etc.. Here are a few facts just to start with:
    Accrediting commission is heavily funded by private foundation Lumina
    Lumina was created by student loan industry giant SLM
    CCSF student success ranks very high according to official data
    CCSF is very popular with high teacher ranking
    CCSF reduced administrators before teachers in face of severe cutbacks
    Accrediting commission leaders have history of conflict with teachers and unions
    Accrediting commission has been criticised for past five years by teacher union, chancellor task force, special task force which compared their ‘standards’ with those of other accrediting commissions around US

    If interested to learn more, google “ACCJC Gone Wild”, Lumina, beyondchron & ccsf.

    Reply
  • G

    GuestAug 28, 2013 at 10:28 am

    You do not have a solution, not even a suggestion. You have ruled out merging with SFSU. You have also ruled out selectively preserving some successful departments. What is left is CCSF as it is, the status quo. What makes you think CCSF can improve if it has been going downhill for the past 20 years. You probably have a lot of faith in the special trustee. But can the unions go along with cut backs ? Are the public willing to put up with more taxes ?

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Xpress staff weighs in on the CCSF accreditation crisis