Full college classes keep students from graduating
By Josh Dulaney, Pasadena Star-News
A shortage of veteran professors and crushing enrollment demands in the California State University system are creating headaches for students who find themselves shut out of the classes they need to graduate in four to six years.
Known as bottleneck courses, there were 1,294 identified throughout CSU’s 23-campus system during the 2012-2013 academic year, according to a survey of 791 department chairs between June 14 and Sept. 6.
CSU officials point to a lack of tenured professors as the biggest cause for the logjam of courses. But other issues — the lack of lab space, students failing and retaking courses and a crush of students taking whatever courses are available in order to maintain the minimum workload needed to keep their financial aid — are driving increasingly harried CSU faculty and staff into semiannual rounds of class-switching, seat-shuffling and other measures to press as many students as possible into a classroom.