ABSTRACT
In 2006 California had over 109 community colleges and more than 2.5 million students enrolled in the largest community college system in the world. The main argument of this chapter is threefold. First, California community colleges have historically been managed institutions beholden to the interests of university officials, state legislators, and public school administrators who used them as a filtering-out mechanism. Second, Californian society, labor markets, and public schools have been highly segregated for most of the state’s history. Until the 1960s junior colleges had been designed to serve high school students and traditional college students and became the primary point of entry for most traditional-age college students entering postsecondary education in the state. Junior colleges in California were supposed to be open institutions of higher education for all high school graduates who could benefit from some college-level education. Most UC faculty and staff will have to take 11 to 26 mandatory furlough days over the 2009–2010 school year.
