July 8

Professors Pay Students’ Tuition
Tuition usually goes helps to pay faculty salaries. But at California’s Santa Ana College, some professors are paying their students’ tuition.

The community college’s Opportunity Scholarship will be offered for the first time this fall. The scholarship, for those with unmet financial need and a grade-point average of at least a B, was created by professors. Faculty members, either by themselves or with a colleague, are agreeing to pay for a full year of tuition for a student. Tuition for a California resident is $20 per unit, with full-time students taking at least 12 units a semester.

Professors thought of the idea after noticing that students were dropping out because of financial restraints.

Santa Ana College, in Orange County, serves many low income and immigrant students, said Jeff McMillan, a chemistry instructor and former president of the Academic Senate. Many students are the children of undocumented immigrants, and they are not eligible for assistance from the government, he said. This led McMillan to try to find ways to help students stay in college.

Sara Lundquist, vice president of student services at Santa Ana College, said the problem was first identified to her when she was walking to the coffee cart at the beginning of the fall semester. She was approached by a counselor at Santa Ana, Issac Guzman, who said something needed to be done about the students dropping out because of financial constraints.

Then people wrestling with the problem on their own, like Lundquist and Guzman and McMillan, started working together. Once the project was approved, professors, administrators and departments joined in. An article in the Los Angeles Times led to contributions from people who don’t work at the college.

Originally, the scholarship was planned to be an “intimateâ€