After 6 years of enrolling, 70% don't make it out of Community College

An article about community college and being what the famous student activist and current SPACE Director JP Bareng Schumacher calls, "transfer-stuck"

San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Six years after they started college, more than 70 percent of community college students are failing to earn an associate's degree, get a certificate, or transfer to a four-year school, according to a study released Tuesday.

It also found that black and Latino students fare even worse than the general population, with only 22 percent of Latino students and 26 percent of black students reaching their academic goals within six years.

I felt mighty uncomfortable adhering so strictly to the "Pilipino" in Pilipino Transfer Student Partnership while outreaching. I don't think were all balling or anything, but I think the word tended to obstruct any initial access. I used to say we were "based" on Pilipino groups, and would emphasize in the next sentence how we outreached to whoever.

"Sometimes I feel like school is making me more stupid because I'm wasting time learning obsolete information I'll never use," said Sam Wouters, 22, of Azusa, who is in his fourth year at Citrus College.

That's what my Anthro degree feels like at times with so much of the UCLA focus on theory and reading. I wish I learned SPSS, GIS, some kind of computer application something to get me in the door of fitting the research demands.

So I'm in Grad School Now

And looking at the Decisionmaking-tracking thing, wow, I am a total fucking idiot.

I was totally aiming to go to the Rutgers program because any topic I'm interested in they have there, but I was in a relationship that I thought was the greatest fucking thing in the world, and ended up not applying.

Now that relationship is done, I'm at Cal State Long Beach's Anthro program, which isn't bad and is local, but...oh well, I think it's an opportunity. I'm still connected to UCLA and can use their libraries.

I think I needed an M.A. program to get my feet wet for this whole academia and research thing. One grad student with an MA already told me that you shouldn't even go to grad school if you don't get funded 3/4s of the way. Thank god Long Beach is dirt-fucking cheap. Plus, I got grants to pay for this year!

As to the actual content of this program, the Department head said something to the effect of "you come in, you do your thesis, you're done." Accordingly this experience as a springboard onto something.

Keywords to my topic at this juncture: cops, cognition, decisionmaking, episodic memories, public engagement, justifications, argumentation, the metaphor of ownership.

So I'm interested in two topics: either message boards and police and community relations. I got interested in message boards because I post on basketball ones all the time, and police and community relations.

What kind of job am I going to get? I still don't know. Adjunct professor, researcher? Professional blogger?

I'm just hoping that the Census calls me again sometime within the next 2 years and asks me to interview people full time.