"At 2:29 p.m. on Jan. 12, Juan Macias, 19, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, sat in a cafe near the engineering firm where he works part time as an office assistant, staring at a laptop computer screen."
In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. “This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun.
Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses — then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period.
“You’re trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education,” said Mr. Macias, a business major. “It really makes me angry.” His classes — the ones that had an opening — begin on Monday.
Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias’s experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical.
Neither of Mr. Macias’s parents went to college; his father is a railroad conductor. One of his five siblings dropped out of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo to go to community college because of financial constraints.
In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. “This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun.
Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses — then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period.
“You’re trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education,” said Mr. Macias, a business major. “It really makes me angry.” His classes — the ones that had an opening — begin on Monday.
Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias’s experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical.
Neither of Mr. Macias’s parents went to college; his father is a railroad conductor. One of his five siblings dropped out of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo to go to community college because of financial constraints.