Community college graduates’ salaries increase from an average of $25,600 to $45,571 within three years of receiving their degrees
by Tom Fallo
For over six decades, El Camino College has offered a wide variety of academic and cultural opportunities to South Bay residents of all ages. Students earn associate’s degrees, prepare for transfer to four-year institutions, and gain training for the workforce that sustains our South Bay community.
This responsibility guides our focus at the college, even while facing dire economic circumstances and state budget cuts.
As we plan for the future, we recognize emerging trends in the areas of technology, learning environments that reach beyond the classroom, and partnerships and collaborations with business and industry, affording us expanded opportunities for meeting the needs of the changing workplace.
El Camino College is adding to its extensive list of support programs with the launch of a new initiative designed to assist students in their efforts to achieve their goals and graduate with an associate’s degree. According to a recently released report by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy, 70 percent of students seeking degrees at California’s community colleges did not attain them, nor did they transfer to four-year universities within six years. Our goal is to improve these numbers.
El Camino recently received a $3.24 million Title V (Hispanic Serving Institutions) grant intended to increase graduation rates.
Recent studies indicate that students receiving a degree or certificate from a community college benefit from an 86 percent increase in their wages, from $25,600 to $45,571, within three years of earning their degree. In addition, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there is a shortage in the nation’s labor force of workers with up to two years of postsecondary education.
New programs will be established at El Camino College to help strengthen student readiness for the pursuit of the associate degree, while also strengthening student learning and faculty teaching in essential gateway courses such as reading, writing, and mathematics to add to the many other specialized programs.
Students like Vivian Meza will certainly benefit from these programs. Vivian graduated from Narbonne High School in 2006 and attended El Camino College that same fall, enthusiastic to fulfill her dreams to study astronomy. During her first semester, she earned a 3.6 grade point average. But by the second semester, everything had changed and she found her grades slipping while juggling calculus and physics.
That next year she was on a rollercoaster – taking classes and dropping them – becoming more and more frustrated until she finally decided to take some time off and left ECC.
Vivian was on the management track at a restaurant and earning a great salary, but was drawn back to the classroom. She came back to El Camino College last fall. This time, she decided to try MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement), a program that provides support to students majoring in math or science so they excel academically and transfer to four-year institutions.
Since joining MESA, Vivian has passed all of her classes without dropping a single one. She is now a physics tutor – the same class she dropped years ago. Vivian plans to graduate from ECC in the spring and transfer to UCLA, UC Berkeley, or UC Santa Barbara in the fall. Graduate school will follow.
Vivian says her success came from finding support through tutoring and study groups.
At El Camino College, we believe every student is a success story.
Tom Fallo is the president of El Camino College. ER
