PHOTO/STEVE RHODES
The Onslaught Begins – corporatizing community colleges
OAKLAND, CA — The Accreditation Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) announced on July 3 it was revoking the accreditation of CCSF, the state’s largest Community College with 85,000 students. Without accreditation, the school cannot get public funds; students cannot get credit. Now everyone understands that the gauntlet is thrown down.
The ACCJC is a private body, empowered to judge public schools! It is controlled and bankrolled by the Lumina Foundation, which made its money financing student loans.
ACCJC will close City College to make CCSF the example to reshape the mission of California community colleges in the corporate mold: less students, less campuses, only classes that fit THE JOB MARKET, less teachers, less democracy, more administrators with more power.
The faculty union, California Federation of Teachers(CFT), has filed a formal complaint against ACCJC, documenting scores of instances of improper, even illegal behavior by ACCJC in its investigation of CCSF. This has the potential to force the issue out into the open, allowing us to see the forces at play more clearly.
This massive cutback is a fully bipartisan effort. Since 2009, California has cut hundreds of millions from community colleges under the guise of Austerity. The CCSF chancellor at that time stated: “You guys are talking about cutting classes, we don’t believe in that. Cut… other stuff first, cut it until it hurts, and then talk about cutting classes.” That was the school’s real crime; they rebelled against cutting student needs.
The ACCJC is not “rogue”; it’s following the demands of the Department of Education to base federal aid on performance and results. They want to end the mission of community colleges to guarantee lifelong learning, adult education, GEDs, and English classes for immigrants.
Now California has imposed a trustee on CCSF with total financial power. Michigan’s “financial manager” dictatorship (Public Act 4) is spreading.
This shows the new economic and political reality we face. To fight and win, we need clarity about what we are up against. There is no possibility of compromise between public and corporate needs, no matter which corporate party promotes it; corporations or the public will win, our future hangs in the balance.
What must be understood to take the next steps is that no section of the corporate community is an ally of the public. We cannot rely on the corporate media to tell our story.
The Chicago Teachers Union showed the way – that the real corporate/government attack is to end access to college. They showed how to build a bond between teachers and their community. CCSF represents the future for the youth of the city. Every single public official must be held accountable and forced to take up its defense.
We will have to get out into the neighborhoods, parent meetings and churches to counter the lies being told about teachers and education, and to have the discussions that build the kind of class unity we’re going to need to win for all of us.
Right on! The ACCJC is a corporate tool newly honed to destroy public higher eduction. Resist!
Dear Peter Brown,
Thank You for this succinct essay. If CCSF falls, then the rest of the community college in the nation will follow. Our politicians have stood on the sidelines while the wrecking crew have continued to destroy City College. Mayor Lee, Di Fi, Pelosi, and Boxer have been directed to play their violins while the academy burns. The latest casualty is the Performing Arts Center. The interim chancellor announced that it will not go forward even though the bonds to fund it have been in place for some time and it is “spade ready’ for construction. This Center is designed to provide the arts for a whole swath of S.F. that either cannot access where the art centers – downtown/Civic Center – or simply cannot afford the venues in those areas. It would be a place Multicultural in scope due to the numerous presentations truly reflecting the Diversity of our campus and community. I agree with the sentiment that go along to get along simply won’t work. The ACCJC, interim chancellor, and the $1,000 a day special trustee have invaded our commons to shrink the school, bust the unions, and turn our beloved institution into a cash cow for the banks because of all the students kicked to the curb by these carpetbaggers. Our only hope is that the ACCJC will be indicted, discredited, and disbanded. Fortunately, Dennis Herrera has filed a lawsuit against them, but the clock is ticking, and they still have the power to shut the school down. Let us hope enough citizens and leaders with conscience prevent this from happening by taking this to the streets, City Hall, Sacramento, and D.C..
This is an important article. Thank you Peter Brown. However, Lumina did not “make its money” “financing” student loans. A corporation two steps away, America USA, made an enormous fortune “processing”–not “financing” student loans. It then converted its profits into a non-profit foundation, Lumina Foundation. Here is the wikipedia history:
“Lumina Foundation is a conversion foundation created in mid-2000 as USA Group, Inc., the nation’s largest private guarantor and administrator of education loans, sold most of its operating assets to the Student Loan Marketing Association, Inc. (Sallie Mae). Proceeds from the sale established the USA Group Foundation with an endowment of $770M. The Foundation was renamed Lumina Foundation for Education in February, 2001.[3]”
So you see, it was guarantor and administrator, not financier. And it does not entirely “bankroll” ACCJC. It was ACCJC’s parent organization, WASC (which is an accrediting umbrella for Community colleges (ACCJC), plus the WASC senior colleges and universities, plus the K-12 accreditor–and it was this three-commission parent accreditation organization which received the 1.5 million dollar Lumina grant a year and a half ago (not specifically ACCJC). But we do not know what portion of the WASC budget that 1.5 million represents, nor can we calibrate exactly how much policy churn that financial contribution might earn. What is emerging as an equally worrisome trend is that Lumina Foundation is also funding many, many desperate media outlets (which have been starved of resources for many years now and increasingly dependent on these sorts of grants)–with the express objective of “Building Public Will” for change in education that is focused on “outcomes” and that will make public education cheaper(thus reduce the need to make the tax structure more fair and to generate more tax revenue) and will divert more educational $$ transactions to the private sector. In fact, Lumina Foundation has an entire division devoted to media intervention, and the Washington Monthly’s half a million dollar grant is typical. Here is the grant blurb:
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The Washington Monthly (the Monthly) will commission and publish provocative, forward-looking journalism on higher education issues that will be featured in print, online and in a series of events aimed at policymakers, journalists and opinion leaders in Washington, D.C. The Monthly’s journalism is widely read on Capitol Hill and often sparks follow-up coverage by mainstream publication such as The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post. This coverage will cut across many of Lumina’s strategies, helping to reshape public perception of the challenges and opportunities along the path to the Big Goal. The Washington Monthly will use its increasingly influential College Guide rankings to draw attention to solutions-oriented, long-form journalism that wouldn’t otherwise be produced.
Strategy fund: Build Public Will Budget – See more at: http://www.luminafoundation.org/luminagrants/washington_monthly_corporation/#sthash.MyUOLXHu.dpuf
Thank you, Margaret, for your comment. You’re correct, on both counts
The statement “It is controlled and bankrolled by the Lumina Foundation, which made its money financing student loans” is, on the one hand an extreme summary of Lumina’s roots and role, exposing the source of its funds in exploitation of students and their families, and on the other hand an oversimplification in an attempt to reduce word count under deadline pressure.
Your comment provides a useful “friend of the court” enlargement and correction, and that’s appreciated. I take responsibility for the edit, and will be more careful in subsequent works.
Toward a new world,
Peter