As you may know, the State of California has a "growth cap", which is the percentage of student population growth that Sierra College will be funded to accept. This year, our growth cap is 3%, but our actual student population growth is 7%.

How does that work? Well, this is part of the tradeoff of budgeting. We’re trying to balance building a budget surplus — which can protect core academic programs from big cuts if the state budget gets even worse next year — with increasing access to college, which requires us to hire more part-time instructors, out of our own pocket, to teach that extra 4% of unfunded student growth.

Our management team has been communicating with the Board of Trustees about this for months now, and I think that the college has struck just the right balance. But we are seeing some students turned away with many classes completely full — my sister-in-law is one of the people who can’t get into an English class she wants to take this fall.

Here’s the story…

Enrollment is up at Sierra College, which means students will have a more difficult time getting classes when the fall semester begins Monday.

The most recent figures show enrollment at the Placer County college is up about 7 percent – 18,208 this year, compared with 16,911 last year.

"Almost every class is full," said public information officer Sue Michaels. "Students are coming in and finding there are no spots for them."

Officials say in a down economy, people return to community colleges to retrain. Community colleges offer a wide variety of vocational and professional training at a low cost.

Michaels said students can still register and try to add classes as others drop them.