The future success of California and the nation lies in successfully educating Latinos so they can bolster an increasingly skilled workforce, according to speakers at a forum put on by California Assemblyman Das Williams Tuesday at Ventura College.
"While Latino college completion rates are important in the United States, they are even more so in California with the highest population of Latinos in the United States," Williams said. "Only 16 percent of Latinos have college degrees. If this continues we will not have the skilled workforce we need to depend on for the future."
The forum, titled "Improving Latino College Completion: Promising Policy and Practice," featured presentations by various educators, including new California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris. He called on Williams and newly elected state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson to focus on repairing the damage done by years of cuts to the state's community college system.
"We need to focus on restoring access to higher education. In the past four to five years we've cut enrollment from 2.9 million to 2.4 million," Harris said, explaining that 500,000 students are no longer being served by the state community college system. He said the system would have been serving more than 3 million students by this time if it weren't for the cuts in classes. He also called for restoring classes so students can move through the system "in an expeditious manner." READ MORE
Comments