Budget Cuts Shrink SBCC Enrollment

Due to chronic statewide budget cuts dating back to 2008, Santa Barbara City College was forced to drop 348 individual classes. But for the enrollment cap placed on the number of community college students for which the state would pay, student enrollment at City College for the past two years would have been 21,000. With the cap, there were 19,000, the school’s current enrollment. That’s 1,000 fewer than there were in 2010. These numbers were released locally in the wake of a report that statewide, the community college system was forced to lose 300,000 students since 2009 because of budget-induced reductions in the number of classes offered.