Education
(2009-09-20)
Listen Now:
null
Dr. Tonya Drake, VP of Student Success at Shoreline Community College, where registration lines have been busy, long.
Gary Davis photo.
"Students definitely will find classes that are full and interact with faculty that will have full classes as well. The wait times are longer to get services. So we ask for some patience," says Dr. Tonya Drake, Vice President for Student Success at Shoreline. Her positions oversees the college's student services.
Drake says she's amazed at one statistic, in particular. Financial aid allocated this fall to students at her school is up 65% from last year. The applications keep pouring in. She says it's all her staff can do to keep up.
"So, you see this landslide of students. We have much greater demand than we've had in the past year, and probably past several years. So, more students are seeking financial aid," Drake adds. She says she worries about 2010. With so many students starting two-year programs now, they'll be looking for more state assistance next year, too. Frustrated by the fact so much state support is already tapped, Drake says it doesn't make sense to starve the solution.
"Community colleges are an important part of the uplift in a recession. We can retrain people to go back out in the workforce. It takes us a little bit of time to do it. So you can't deplete the resources at the greatest time of the need," she says.
To help its students make ends meet Shoreline is spending its reserves, collected from private donations, to make sure students who've been accepted have their books and the supplies at hand when classes start there on Wednesday.
One of those students will be Naomi Mendez, admitted to Shoreline late last week. Mendez applied under Washington's Basic Food Employment Training (BFET) program. A Shoreline spokesman says Mendez is likely one of the last students granted access through the program to matriculate this fall. Funds for BFET and other state offered education access programs are nearly dried up due to record demand this year.
Mendez is at Shoreline to for its nursing assistant certification program. Like so many of the students going back to school, Mendez has been out of work for months. The single mom was laid off from her job in a mental health program. She says tried hard to find another similar position, but found the jobs extremely scarce.
"I realized I wasn't going to be able to find the job that I wanted, and I probably wasn't going to be able to make more than $12 an hour, which isn't a livable wage in Seattle. And so I thought, I'd better figure out what to do next," Mendez says. She was alerted to the BFET program by a DSHS employee. She applied, hoped for the best, and then waited anxiously to hear if she was accepted.
"So it was a little scary to not know what was going to happen and not being able to find a job, and I feel really fortunate I got in." She'll join a record number of students at Shoreline this week, a scene being played out across the state at most two-year colleges. Gary Davis, KPLU News, Shoreline.
© Copyright 2012, KPLU
