Taking an alternate route: as competition increases to gain admission into the University of California system, more students are going the community-college route - Academic Kickoff Special Report: community colleges - university transfer programs for community college students - Berkeley has Cooperative Admissions Program

Black Issues in Higher Education, August 28, 2003 by Pamela Burdman

Though California's generous financial aid program means the cost of attending college should remain the same for low-income students, the sticker shock alone could push more students to community colleges--especially students who are averse to taking out loans.

Programs like CAP can help students who do well in high school but need an extra edge to get admitted to Berkeley. "I got into San Francisco State, but my family really wanted me to go to Berkeley," says Amy Lei, who finished high school in San Francisco after her family immigrated from Shanghai. "After I was rejected, it was like the world was over. But I was talking to a teacher who said you can still go."

Lei found out about CAP. Though she wanted to major in business at Berkeley, she went through CAE knowing she would at least get admitted to the College of Letters and Science, and if her grades weren't high enough for the business school, she would major in psychology. In the end, her 4.0 GPA at City College made business school an option.

But many students enter community college without a transfer plan, and some get stuck there. It is these students who are the focus of Collis Carkhum, a recent Berkeley graduate who started out at Merritt College in Oakland. Now Carkhum works as a student activities adviser at the college and volunteers with Berkeley's mentorship program to help young students, especially fellow African Americans, follow in his path.

"Many African American students at the community-college level, their first thought is to go to Cal State-Hayward. I ask them, 'Why don't you want to go to a place like Berkeley?' There's this mythical thing that it's too hard. I've been trying to demystify Berkeley by stressing that the hardest thing about Berkeley is getting in."

That has become especially true for African American students since the elimination of affirmative action in the state. While admissions have gotten harder over all, the admit rate for Black transfer applicants has fallen even more. Back in 1995, 34 percent of African Americans who applied to transfer to Berkeley got admitted. Last year, only 21 percent did, bringing the total number of entering Black transfer students down from 109 to 62.

While overall applications to Berkeley went up 20 percent in seven years, the number of African American California residents fell from 339 in 1995 to just 299 last year.

THE RIGHT FIT

The smaller scale of a community college is often just what's needed for students who have the academic potential to attend schools like Berkeley and UCLA, but lack the confidence. Some colleges have special programs to help these students.

Malcolm Harvey says that without a few teachers urging him on, he probably wouldn't have made it to UC Berkeley. Harvey grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where he barely attended school, and thinks he would have continued on that path had he not gotten shot and been hospitalized at the age of 17 and decided to try the straight-and-narrow path. During a 10-year stint in the Navy, he discovered his aptitude for digital math and algebra, but it was only after embarking on a career in retail and seeking to enter the managerial ranks that he realized the importance of a college degree.